The Shadow Hunters
by Master of The Blood Wolves
Summary: An Inquisition-backed mercenary outfit pursuing a heretic find themselves in an alternate reality that appears to be almost exactly opposite of what they're used to. Their hunt brings them into contact with one Commander Shephard and his own hunt for a wanted fugitive. But something bigger is at stake and the Shadow Hunters are willing to risk almost anything to see it stopped.
1. Chapter 1

**The Shadow Hunters**

Chapter I

The Hunters and their Prey

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Mass Effect or Warhammer 40,000 franchises.**

The _Relentless Pursuit_ shuddered and groaned like a man with a hangover at the stress exerted on her.  
Logan Nayl felt a twinge of worry at the sound, and he knew Romulus and Haekeer and quite possibly Tu'shak as well, would give him a verbal beating for risking the modified scout corvette in such a manner.  
+_'Nayl, we need to slow up, the Pursuit can't maintain this pace.'_+ Romulus said, his almost-monotone voice not quite hiding his worry. +'_If current stress continues, the ship will be destroyed in two-point-two-two minutes.'+_

Up ahead, the scout ship their quarry had stolen slipped through the mysterious structure, which promptly went dark, and ceased functioning. Logan dipped his head in defeat.  
'Call it off, Romulus,' he said reluctantly, and the ship began to decelerate. He stood, ripped his headset off, slammed it down and stormed from the bridge, punching the wall as he did. The lance of pain made him swear, adding to his bad temper.

Durzo Petrov had escaped them.

After instigating a Necron invasion of Argus Delta, the Xenophilic techno-heretic had led them a merry dance across the Messiah Sector, and upon leading them to the quarantined Ulixes system, had proceeded to challenge them to a desperate dash to an arcane xenotech structure.  
Nayl had no clue what the hell the device was, and he wasn't willing to risk his ship and his band of mercs with it.

He looked around himself and was unsurprised to find himself in the ante-chamber to the ship's chapel.  
He often came here when his feelings got the better of him.  
Being a psyker, emotional outbursts were a high-risk luxury, even having been sanctioned by the Emperor.  
'Nayl?' Asked a voice in surprise.  
He glanced to the left, and was unsurprised to see Sasha Santana exiting her small, austere room adjacent to the chapel.

She was an Adepta Sororita attached to the Order of the Solemn Watch, one of only two surviving members.  
The other, Sister Superior Maria Celestine was the local chirurgeon and medicae.  
The pair had been plucked from a Necron Tomb World after an abortive attempt to explore the world for lost human cultures, Imperial relics, or other items of value.  
It had been,-from Nayl's viewpoint,- fortunate that he and Sasha had been brought up in the same Scholar Progenium on Terra, as it had given him a chance to reconcile the two Sororitas with their new circumstances.

'Yeah, Nayl.' He replied bitterly. 'Durzo got away, slipped through some sort of construct. Don't know what it did, or where it leads, but…' He trailed off.  
'You're angry that he got away?' Sasha enquired. While she wasn't a Confessor, she could play the role admirably.  
'I lost my temper.' Admitted Nayl.  
'Ah.' Sasha said. 'I'll let you pray. Do you require-'  
'I'm fine praying. I don't flagellate myself. It doesn't help.' Nayl replied. 'Why even suggest it?'  
Sasha dipped her head.  
'Old habits I suppose; if the Solemn Watch was still around, I don't think the Sister Superior would've been able to do anything but turn a blind-eye to the self-flagellation we'd meet out on ourselves for the blasphemy of serving alongside Xenos.'

'Aside from the expected ones, do you have a problem with that?' Nayl asked. 'The criteria for joining this outfit is pretty clear, I appreciate what you and the Sister Superior do on this ship, but you know zeal isn't something I need to deal with here.'  
'Just the expected problems; and even they're not as bad as you might think.'

Nayl could tell that as a Sororita who was a member of an exploratory Order, Sasha had confused feelings over the various xenos in Nayl's band, though he trusted her and the Sister Superior not to shoot them now.  
Of course, for the first year or two, Sasha and Celestine had only accepted the xenos members of Nayl's crew under sufferance, but they'd gradually gotten used to them.  
The cajoling of the likes of Freya Silverblade, Solomon Cole and Benjamin Wilkes hadn't hurt either, particularly as Wilkes was an ex-commissar.  
The fact they'd mainly fought chaos, as well as other xenos alongside Nayl's band had further reconciled them.

'I'll leave you to it then.' Sasha said, and brushed past him.  
Nayl watched her go, he shook his head and proceeded into the chapel.

* * *

_Damned hothead._ Romulus groused to himself as he coordinated diagnostics of the _Pursuit's _systems.  
_No need to space him, structural integrity is nominal and unchanged._ Reported Haekeer.

It still irked Romulus, all the upgrades and modifications Nayl had insisted on adding to the _Pursuit_.  
First it was just standard stuff on old Inquisitor Burgman's start-up credit:  
Warpbane hull, vectored engines, a stasis field to capture emissions from the plasma reactors…  
Fairly standard stuff.  
Then, as he acquired Xenos crew he'd started to incorporate other upgrades:  
First was the wraithbone interface throughout the ship so Haekeer could interface with it,-a bright idea Nayl had had after an experience in Commoragh.  
Then it was the visual camouflage and holo-fields.  
And most recently, Tau-inspired plasma batteries!  
And that wasn't even _mentioning _all the stuff in the armoury!  
Still, the boy had tolerated Romulus's own eccentricity, as well as his own project in regards to his personal gun-cutter.

_Scans of the structure are complete. It's Necron for certain, but of a variety very, very rarely encountered. _Haekeer said.  
_How rarely?_ Romulus asked the spirit of the Eldar shipmaster curiously.  
_So rare we believed for many eons that it was just a myth, despite records of its existence._ Haekeer replied.  
Romulus scrutinised the scans:  
The structure was like a giant tuning fork with a gyroscope at it's heart, containing some glowing substance that was giving off strange readings.  
_Some form of giant rail gun maybe?_ Romulus mused.

But that wasn't all:  
A few hundred kilometres from the parallel arms of the structure was a huge ring-like construct, which the other structure had launched Petrov's ship through.

_What is it?_ Romulus asked.  
_Your guess at the structure with the central rings is accurate enough, but the ring-edifice? I do not know.  
_Romulus went about ordering the servitor crew to see to maintenance, and seeing to it that the _Pursuit's _machine spirit was content.  
Not that that was much of a chore, the machine spirit always seemed to be happier when Haekeer was in the ship's systems, for reasons Romulus couldn't fathom.

_Be advised, a Necron vessel just entered the system ten thousand kilometres off our stern. _Haekeer reported. _And it's hailing us.  
_+_'Attention all, we've got a contact. Report to the briefing room immediately.'_+ Said Romulus into the ship's vox system, knowing that his call would be heeded.

* * *

Durzo Petrov disengaged his mind-impulse unit from his command throne and stood, groaning as muscles gone to sleep flexed.  
He went to a console and brought up the nav data he'd acquired from the Necrons he'd tricked into attacking Argus Delta.  
He grinned, and used his augmetics to interface directly with the terminal, absorbing the data.  
The Jump Gate had worked as specified according to what his scanning and data interception protocols were feeding him.

Now all that remained, was to find this 'Outsider,' help it return to it's place of origin, and then…  
That was curious, he was being hailed by a vessel that bore the particular data-frequency of the being that had contacted him.  
_Human…your presence is an anomaly, yet there is a prescribed response to your particular presence. Come to me, enter my structure, and learn your purpose._ Said a deep, almost-monotone voice that spoke of unfathomable age.  
_As you command, harbinger of my Ascension._ Petrov replied in binary.

* * *

Nayl looked at the ship that had just landed:  
A Necron Doom Scythe, but this one seemed…to lack a certain degree of intimidation, though Nayl couldn't quite put his finger on why.  
He traded glances with Tehmujai, an Eldar ranger who heralded from the Saro-thal Craftworld.  
'This is different.' Nayl said.  
'Be wary, the Necrons consider all organics lesser beings to be subjugated to their will. No telling what this is about.' He warned.

'I say we wire this thing with haywire grenades and blast it back where it came from.' Said Cerabi.  
She was a Scourge, who'd once flown with the Kabal of the Deathly Embrace, but had apparently had a quirk of conscience somewhere along the line, for unknown reasons and had sought clemency from the Craftworlds.  
She'd joined Nayl's mercenary group at roughly the same time as Tehmujai, and despite Nayl's reservations, had yet to cause any major trouble beyond the usual kind.

'I'm with the Xenos on this one, Nayl.' Opined Wilkes, a sour faced man, who still wore the black long-coat and officer's cap of a Commissar, despite having quit for life as a mercenary almost a decade previously.

'They're right, we don't have a good history with these tin cans, hell, those chaos-bastards like us more, and we're drinkin' buddies with the Orks or Tau, compared with them.' Said Cole, stubbing out a cigar against a wall and hefting his melta gun.

'Stay sharp, let's just hear what this thing has to say first. And if we don't like it, we throw it out the airlock and loot the Scythe for all it's worth.' This was K'toia, a Kroot mercenary who'd come along with Nayl, Romulus and Cole when Burgman had agreed to fund the start-up for this little mercenary band.

Cereta simply nodded his scaly head, a pair of power swords in his lower hands, and a storm-bolter cradled in his upper ones. The Sslyth shifted slightly and reared back on his tail a bit more to get a better angle.

'No need to go looking for a fight where there isn't one, but you speak sense if this thing proves hostile.' Said Freya, swinging her power-axe experimentally.

Nayl went to tell them to stop talking and focus, but a boarding ramp lowering from the ship stopped him, and he instead chose to sight down the barrel of his pulse rifle, which he'd liberated from a Tau commander nearly five years previously.  
The same mission he'd killed Father Magnus…_Focus_. He told himself sternly.

A huge figure descended from the Doom Scythe.  
Nine feet tall easily, with a pistol-like weapon mounted on the left wrist, and in the right hand was some kind of sword-like weapon, though it looked like it took certain cues from an axe…Nayl decided to call it a cleaver and leave it at that, until he found otherwise.  
Green wych-light burned in it's eye sockets as it surveyed them, and then it spoke in a deep, almost-monotone that screamed 'machine' to Nayl.  
'I come here seeking the Inquisition-backed mercenary group designated the 'Shadow Hunters,' be you they?' Asked the Necron with a touch of superiority evident in tis synthetic voice.  
'Yeah, we're them. What do you want, Necron?' Nayl asked.  
'I am Marathik, emissary of Trazyn the Infinite.' The Necron proclaimed.  
'Good to know. That doesn't answer my question.' Stated Nayl, resting his finger on the trigger.  
'I have come at the behest of my master; you and he share similar objectives.'  
'And what might that be?' Nayl asked.

Marathik didn't reply.  
Instead, it stiffened.  
'Assuming partial control…' Said a different almost-monotone, and the wych-light in the Necron's eyes flickered momentarily.  
'Hmm…' The Necron said, and surveyed the collected mercenaries. 'Logan Nayl.' It said, indicating him. 'Bastard son of noted operative of Inquisitors Ravenor and Eisenhorn, Harlon Nayl and an unidentified Carthage woman. Psyker. twenty-five years old, standard Imperial. Leader of the Shadow Hunters mercenary band, ex-interrogator to Inquisitor Gaius Burgman. Formed Shadow Hunters to operate as a 'damage control' force for the Inquisitor, taking out targets with few or no civilian casualties to ostensibly avoid retaliations against Imperium. Scholar Progenium training. Little significance in grand scheme of things.'

'Mmhm, that's me. What do you want?' Logan asked, and wondering how the hell the damn robot knew so much about him.  
'I believe you recently lost a target through the Jump Gate located approximately ten-thousand kilometres away?'  
'Yeah, we did. So what?'  
'That Jump Gate leads to an alternate reality.'

'We've dealt with shit like that before. You should see your entry in the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_; I heard you charge a ten Altaran dollar fee for tours through that reliquary of yours.' Cole interjected, giving the Necron Overlord an impudent grin.  
'If I ever catch the bastard who put that in their, I'll put them on display as a warning.' Trazyn said as an aside to Cole. 'A certain entity that escaped being shattered at the close of our war with the Old Ones is hiding somewhere in the reality this Jump Gate connects with. I am willing to open it to you if you would be kind enough to go through and stop your target from guiding this entity back to this plane of existence.' Trazyn explained.  
'What's the catch?' Nayl asked.  
'The entity you're trying to stop returning is a C'Tan.'

There was dead silence at Trazyn's revelation.

'How exactly do you suggest we defeat a being that is to all intents and purposes a god?' Asked Tehmujai interrogatively.  
'You'll find a way.' Trazyn replied unhelpfully. 'I will leave Marathik with you, do take care of her. Cheerio.' With that, the Necron's eyes flickered once more and it staggered.  
Marathik gazed around at the assembled mercenaries, then 'sighed'.

Relatively speaking. Her body language bespoke one, and the sound she made was similar but that was where the similarity ended.  
An awkward silence ensued, which the Necron eventually broke.  
'So, where do you plan on letting me stay?' She asked.

Nayl traded glances with his compatriots.  
He didn't even need to be a psyker to know the general consensus was not to piss off the ten-foot-tall hyper-advanced killing-machine.  
'Just set up here in this hangar out of the way.' Nayl said. 'There'll be a briefing in an hour's time, but just one question: How the hell did the Necrons get involved in this? You mind filling in the leap of logic between a Xenophilic techno-heretic, and a super-ancient sentient machine wanting him captured or killed?'  
'At the close of the War in Heaven, when the Silent King ordered the destruction of the C'Tan, one of them escaped through a warp-anomaly caused by one of the Talismans of Vaul being destroyed. I imagine that this flight cost it dearly in terms of strength and power. Skip ahead to the present day, and your quarry, Durzo Petrov found an artefact designed by a minor dynasty that is now destroyed to locate this C'Tan so they could bring it under their control. The C'Tan seduced Petrov into doing it's bidding, and he stole the location of this Jump Gate from a client dynasty of Trazyn's. A fully-fledged C'Tan is too powerful a being to be bound; better by far to leave it trapped in this alternate reality.' Marathik explained.  
'I take it that's the abbreviated version?' Questioned Wilkes.  
'Of course it is, the Necrons wouldn't give up their secrets just because we asked them to.' Tehmujai said.  
'Your suspicion is unsurprising, Eldar, indeed I would be disappointed if you took me at my word. However, I think we can both agree that a full C'Tan is a threat worth working together to neutralise.' Marathik replied.  
'Alright!' Nayl shouted. 'We'll get to the details at the briefing. Until then, Tehmujai, Cereta, Cerabi, K'toia, watch her, Wilkes, Cole, I'd like you to brief Sister Santana and Sister Superior Celestine on this latest development in advance. Dismissed.' Nayl said, before leaving the hangar.

* * *

This time, Nayl headed for his quarters.  
Upon entering, a hand-sized vermillion dragon flitted from it's roost over Nayl's desk and landed on his shoulder, nuzzling him affectionately.  
Nayl stroked the little creature with uncharacteristic gentleness.  
The little creature was his familiar. He called her Fleur.  
He'd acquired her ten years previously on a feral world spin ward of Eternia, and close to the border with the neighbouring sub-sector on the core-side.  
He still couldn't quite figure out how he'd come by her:

His cover as a wanderer had been compromised by the heretic he'd been hunting, who'd taken over as a local shaman.  
He'd ended up beating the heretic down with his hands, and the deposed shaman had gifted him Fleur's egg in thanks.  
The specifics of how much of an honour, and what custom he'd exemplified to be granted the little thing were beyond him, but he'd learnt a few things in the intervening decade:

First, she was semi-sentient.  
Second, she was also a creature with a warp-connection not unlike a psyber familiar, only natural.  
And third, she possessed the ability to teleport.  
Combining all those things, and Fleur made an excellent forward scout on missions where a little bit of foreknowledge went a long way.

Fleur chirped questioningly.  
Nayl mentally explained the circumstances.  
She huffed and bobbed her head from side to side in a '_it's never easy_' kind of way.  
_Wouldn't be worth the time if it was._ Nayl replied. _So, think you're up to giving me some foresight?_ He asked.  
Fleur gave a sharp, short chirp.

Nayl sighed. 'Figures.' He said, rubbing the back of his neck, and glanced at the wall mounted mirror:  
He was well muscled, like his father, but he let his black hair grow, though he never let it get too long, and never bothered to do much beyond wash it, and the fringe often hung over his cold blue eyes a bit.  
Due to his chosen line of work, he had earned a few scars,-one clipping his eyebrow from a piece of shrapnel from an exploding car back in his interrogator days, another tracing the left side of his jaw from a fairly unpleasant encounter in Commoragh with a Dark Eldar wych,-but his nose was fine,-more a testament to the expertise of the medical staff he was treated by, than an indication of the number of breaks.

Fleur flitted from his shoulder as he went and stood before a convex panel in the wall.  
He tapped in an entry code, and the panel slid back to reveal a suit of jet-black environmentally sealed, powered carapace armour.  
A few more typed commands, and the servo-arms in the container came to life and began to outfit him.

* * *

'So, you mind telling us just how deep in the shit we're jumping when we go through that gate?' Asked Wilkes, leaning back in his chair and tipping his beaked hat back from his eyes.  
'That Jump Gate was created by the minor dynasty I mentioned. The tyranids destroyed them before they could use it.' Marathik said. 'It is in line with similar devices in the parallel reality it connects too. I won't bore you with the tech, but suffice to say that the normal variety is a highly efficient superluminal transport device.'  
'Okay, what's this one do?' Asked Tehmujai.  
'I will make this simple for you: It throws the ship that enters it through a black hole, and out a temporary white hole at the other end. Your quarry isn't the only one who mined the dynasty's data cores.'  
'How do we know that Petrov didn't get spaghettified?'  
'The Outsider escaped using similar means.' Marathik replied.  
'How was it able to contact Petrov?' Tehmujai asked. 'That would've required the C'Tan to manipulate the warp, a feat they're incapable of.'  
'Unknown.' Marathik replied simply.  
'How did Trazyn find out about this?' Asked Cereta, his guttural voice turning the final syllable into a snake-like hiss.  
'Unknown. He simply relayed the information to me and told me the most promising solution.'  
'Which was?' Cole asked around a lho-stick.  
'To contact the Inquisition-backed mercenary band hunting the Outsider's pawn and aid them in eliminating it.' Marathik replied.  
'What can we expect on the other side?' Asked K'toia, who stopped picking his teeth with a toothpick, and crossed his wiry arms.  
'I have scant data. Trazyn the Infinite apparently had little interest in this alternate reality. What specimens he is interested in are, quote: 'too big to acquire without looking suspicious.'' Marathik replied. 'However, Terra and the Sol system exist in this alternate reality, though we believe that the being known as 'The Emperor' does not have an analogue in this alternate reality; paradoxically, due to the activities of the Outsider, the warp-entities known as 'The Ruinous Powers' have minimal or no influence there.'

'Better than most briefings the Adeptus Munitorum fed me over the years.' Wilkes conceded, adjusting his hat once again.

Nayl tapped his gauntleted hand against the table.  
'Okay, so we're going in pretty much blind. One last question for now, Necron: How do we get back here when we're done?' He asked.  
'Unknown, though in theory, a skilled Navigator should be capable of plotting a course back through the warp.' Marathik answered.  
'Let's hope Marik is worth the credits we paid for him then.' Freya said, pulling a whetstone over the blade of a hand axe.

* * *

'All systems go, Romulus?' Asked Nayl, as he took his accustomed position in the command pulpit.  
'No thanks to you.' The red-robed tech-priest replied waspishly, from where he was interfaced with the command throne.  
'Tu'shak have any complaints?' Nayl asked, choosing to ignore Romulus's sulking.  
'Negative, the Jokaero is too busy agonising over the Necron.' Romulus replied, adjusting the plasma reactor's energy output.

Nayl nodded, knowing Romulus could see the gesture through the bridge security feeds.  
'How about you, Marik?' Asked Nayl, directing the question to the gangly Navigator in the currently open armoured dome.  
'Well, you've locked Jerod in stasis to preserve the poor bastard, and seeings as I'm not an astropath, I shouldn't be too adversely affected by this…to hell with it, let's just do this.' Marik said, entering his station.

'Jump Gate coming on line.' Reported Romulus.  
Nayl watched as they approached the structure, and perceived for the first time, the singularity in the ring-structure.

It's center looked out on an unfamiliar star field, but around it was darkness darker than the void itself:  
The maw of a shackled black hole.

'We are in the device's influence.' Romulus reported unnecessarily.  
Nayl could see the lightning bolt that had just seized them.

An instant later, and they were rushing through infinity.

The _Relentless Pursuit_ was gone, flung to a different interpretation of time and space.

**Okay, this is what I get for playing a Mass Effect marathon.**

**Sorry I haven't updated anything recently.**

**That's the holidays and the ME marathon for you.**

**I'm still writing, it's just intermittent, that's all.**

**Also, a big thank you to Colonel-Mustard1990 for agreeing to Beta this story.**

'**til next time:**

**No One-liners.**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter II

Arrival

**Disclaimer: See Chapter One.**

The _Relentless Pursuit_ appeared among the stars like a giant barbed dagger, ominous and threatening.

'Status report.' Nayl said. 'Did it work?'

'Yep, it worked, take a look yourself Nayl, the warp has slacked right off; the astronomican is still visible, but it's more like a light bulb than a lighthouse now.' Marik reported. With a tone that suggested he was enjoying himself, he added; 'I could get used to this.'

'I have confirmation that we are at the very least, back in time,' Romulus reported. 'The stars in the area correspond to those near the northern edge of Ultramar, though approximately thirty-eight thousand years prior to our own native time. Also, several late-life stars correspond to stars that had died in our own time.' He added.

+_'I can confirm we're in an alternate reality.'+_ Haekeer said. +'_I'm monitoring communications presently, and I'm hearing languages I've never heard, and looking over the ship's scanners, I can identify at least five star systems not present in our own map. Two would be nebulae, but the remaining three simply do not exist.'+_

'So, the Necron wasn't feeding us groxshit.' Nayl said. 'Alright, start data-mining, I want to know everything there is to know about where we've found ourselves. Consult the _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,_ if you have to, perform an augury, scry the future, whatever, we need intel.'

Marik, Romulus and Haekeer chorused affirmatives, then Nayl quit the bridge.

Just a few minutes later, came first contact.

* * *

Tiras'Ranma vas Aleia was terrified, and with good reason.

Having bartered passage on an Alliance freighter as a mechanic to the human colony of Shanxi, the most trouble she'd expected was suspicion from the crew, and mechanical issues. She'd definitely not planned on batarian slavers attacking the ship, murdering most of the crew, and taking her, and a few others prisoner to sell in the Terminus Systems.

The only thing she was thankful for was they hadn't confiscated her enviro-suit. Apparently ill slaves didn't sell, so she'd been discreetly scanning all channels trying to find help. A risky move with a guard watching, but what else could she do?

She hadn't been expecting anything like this though.

Now, she was at gun point in front of a terminal.

'Well? Is it broken, or did you cry for help?' Demanded the lead slaver.

'I didn't cry for help!' Tiras shouted back. 'But this thing isn't broken, that…whatever it is, is definitely there.'

'I don't believe you!' The slaver shouted, and backhanded her to the ground, then pulled a Carnifex heavy pistol from it's holster. His tone turned chill and dead. 'Now, tell me what you did, and maybe I won't shoot you.'

Taris could feel herself shaking, but then the terminal lit up. The slaver motioned for one of his underlings to investigate. The underling tapped a command in, then looked up.

'That big thing is hailing us.' He reported.

'Play it.' Ordered the leader.

The underling hit the play button:

'_Unidentified vessel, this is the _Relentless Pursuit,' said a voice Tiras identified as human. '_Power down and prepare to receive a boarding party. Failure to comply will result in the use of deadly force, I repeat, stand down and prepare to receive boarders._'

The leader roughly shoved his underling away and activated the comm.

'Listen here, human, you have no right to board this vessel, unless you want a diplomatic incident with the Hegemony-'

'_My lance batteries and dropship say otherwise, Xenos,'_ said the human. '_Romulus, fire starboard lance battery two hundred kilometres off their port bow.'_ Ordered the human.

'Retek, detecting a massive energy spike from that thing!' Shouted one of the bridge crew.

The next instant, out the forward viewing ports, Tiras saw a blast of blinding ruby light rip through the void.

The batarians went deathly still.

'Impressive.' Retek said into the comm. 'But unless you want to kill our hostages, I suggest you hold your fire.'

As if to show how very little care the human had for the batarian's threats, the ship shuddered violently, knocking the batarians off balance.

'Our engines were just destroyed, but our kinetic barriers are still at full power!' Reported a tech.

'How is that possible?' Demanded Retek.

'Who cares!' We've been boarded!' Shouted another tech.

'Bring me that bastard's head!' Roared Retek, then stormed to a locker and withdrew a Vindicator battle rifle. 'Go to it!' He shouted, and the bridge crew automatically began marshalling the rest of the slavers on the ship.

* * *

Nayl stood in the hold of the Valkyrie drop ship, _Swift Justice_, and drummed his fingers on his Ryza pattern lasgun.

He caught Cole's glance from behind his sunglasses, and nodded, catching Cole's grin as he continued to survey the rest of the boarding party.

Wilkes, who stood next to him was as grim as ever, with his pale skin and violet eyes and the make of his laspitol and powersword, his Cadian origin was evident. On the opposite side of the hold, Freya tossed a hand axe end over end, and flashed Nayl a feral grin. At the look, Nayl felt a twinge of pity for the Xenos that were about to be introduced to the business end of the Fenrisian Shieldmaiden's combat prowess. With an axe in one hand, and a laspistol in the other, she was a nightmare on the offensive.

K'toia snapped his fang-lined beak in anticipation, chambering a round into a Tau rail rifle, his trusty kroot gun across his bony shoulders, and a bolt pistol in a thigh holster, he was going to cover their advance, though if needs be, he'd move to support the sixth member of the team up the front.

That sixth team-member was Cereta. The Sslyth was ideally suited to the vanguard roll, thanks to his constitution, and his four arms, two of which held powered scimitars, and the other two of which once again cradled a storm bolter.

'Hit 'em hard, hit 'em fast.' Said Rafael Brekken, Nayl's resident pilot.

Nayl banged twice on the bulkhead in response.

'Just be ready to pick us up quick, these guys might decide to selfdestruct to get rid of us.' Nayl replied, then addressed the boarding team. 'Alright, our priority is to capture someone to get some information, if someone shoots at us, assume they're hostile. Anyone hiding behind someone, threatening them and telling us to back off is to be considered hostile, even if the someone they're hiding behind is another Xenos, clear?' He asked.

'Clear.' Replied the others, though Wilkes looked uncomfortable.

Like Sasha and Maria, he was uncomfortable with the notion of not killing every alien he saw.

'We're docked.' Reported Brekken. 'Opening airlock now.' The rear hatch opened, and Brekken overrided the ship's docking hatch.

The moment it hissed open, Cereta lunged through, storm bolter at the ready to be met with an empty corridor. He motioned, and everyone piled in behind him.

Nayl reached out with his mind and surveyed the opposing forces.

'Let's split up.' He said. 'Cereta, you, Wilkes and Cole are heading down this corridor to the left, and assaulting the brig where the prisoners are being kept. Kill anything with more than two eyes; K'toia, Freya, you're with me, we're going to hit the control room, which is on the level above us.' He got nods from them all,-none of them questioning his odd instruction regarding four-eyed things,-and the Sslyth, the ex-Commissar and the pyromaniacal inquisitional operative departed to the left.

* * *

Cereta slithered down the middle of the hall, scimitars held at an angle from his sides, and the storm bolter pressed to his shoulder. Wilkes strode at his left with his longcoat snapping behind him and his laspistol in his left hand, with a powersword ready in his opposite hand. On his right, Cole had his combi-flamer at the ready, and was ready to fire and duck in that order if a target should appear.

That target popped up from behind a crate with an assault rifle not thirty seconds after leaving Nayl's group: It was an ugly bastard, even by Cereta's standards: Four eyes, six nostrils, and with reptile-like markings on it's face. It shouted something unintelligible, then Cole put a bolt through it's head-  
-Only for some sort of personal shield to flare, and the bolt to detonate a foot from the thing's face. It screamed as shrapnel and the heat from the explosion hit it, before a shot from Wilkes silenced it.

Another two popped up, only for Wilkes to headshot another one, and Cereta to tear the third one apart with his storm bolter: the first couple of bolts hit the mysterious barrier, before it failed in a flare of blue, allowing the remaining bolts from the burst to rip through the thing's armour like tissue paper, and nearly tear the thing in half from hydrostatic shock.

Cole and Wilkes ducked for cover as more boiled out of a stairwell dead ahead, snapping off the occasional shot.

Cereta on the other hand, launched himself forward, scimitars extended impaling one of the things through the chest, before it was bisected by Cereta whipping the blades out of it's sides. It's companions fired on him with rifles that had the approximate stopping power of high-power autoguns, which against a Sslyth were woefully inadequate. A few with more courage than sense attempted to engage him in close-quarters, only to be cut apart with contemptuous ease.

In the brief and vicious struggle that followed, the remaining beings were either gunned down or slashed apart.

'Clear.' Hissed Cereta as the final one stopped writhing.

Cole and Wilkes vaulted out of cover with makeshift bandages over flesh wounds, before they followed the Sslyth as he slithered into the brig, paying no heed to the collection of bullet wounds and bruises from shots that hadn't made it through his scaly hide.

* * *

_SHOOM-SHLAT!_

Ktoi'a ducked back into cover as the headless corpse toppled backwards. It was roughly three minutes since they'd separated from Cereta, and they'd only met light resistance up until this point. Now, they were pinned on a landing by roughly ten four-eyed, humanoid, xenos.

That was down from roughly twenty, mainly thanks to a combination of K'toia's rail rifle, Nayl's lasgun, and Freya burying something sharp into anything or anyone stupid enough to get into range for her to throw something.

So far, four of the strange xenos, and four creatures that looked like deformed kroot hounds lay dead out in the open from various blades that had been thrown with precision at something that looked vital.

Nayl snapped a shot off at a xenos that was attempting to reposition itself to a position with a better line of fire, ducking back behind the crate he was using as cover as the xenos howled in pain, dragging itself towards cover.

'Nayl, let's not tarry here, as good as this is for target practice, we need to move; stop toying with them, and get serious.' K'toia said, switching his rail rifle for his kroot gun.

'Aye, this is not how Russ meant for his people to fight.' Freya said, drawing a hand axe and giving him a bloody grin.

Nayl fired a few more short bursts of lasfire at the xenos, then ducked down and reloaded.

'Alright, get ready.' He said, and drew his force sword.

Unlike the master-crafted weapons wielded by his mother's people, his sword was neither semi-sentient, nor had a name. However, it was still a potent weapon, commissioned by Inquisitor Burgman when he was sixteen; it had seen him through many hellish fights, and had even claimed the life a corrupt cardinal of the ecclesiarchy and his bodyguards.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and touched the warp.

The familiar feeling of incandescent power touched him and the air about him began to steam cold, and stink of ozone.

Reaching out with his mind, Nayl found the firing mechanisms of the xenos weapons.  
They were unlike any he'd ever encountered: instead of using heat, heat was an unwanted by-product of their function, though they were solid shot weapons instead of plasma-based. All that he needed to do to jam them was fiddle with the nanocogitators the weapons used to fire, or feed a little warp energy into the heat sinks as fire. Nayl did both to ensure the weapons malfunctioned. He came back to himself and was greeted by the unmusical _clacks_ of jamming guns.

It was all the signal Freya and K'toia needed.

They leapt from cover and pelted towards the xenos desperately trying to un-frak their guns, K'toia's physiology meaning he made contact first, swinging his bladed kroot gun like a fighting staff, and catching his opponents completely flat footed. He'd killed or grievously injured three foes by the time Nayl and Freya caught up. Freya crash-tackled one of the xenos and hacked at it in a frenzy, before engaging two more with her axe flashing.

Nayl, on the other hand relied on swift, clinical strikes charged with psychic power to extinguish the life-force of his enemies on a spiritual level. Lightning crackled down his rime-encrusted blade as he swung it, and dread-energies filled his eyes, while his armour conducted the lightning in a frightening display of lambent power. What shots came his way, he sidestepped before they were fired, any clumsy blows with rifle-butts were met with the dangerous end of a force-sword, which usually cleaved through gun and wielder alike.

When he found himself and his companions the only things alive on the landing, he came back to himself, sealed his mind and muttered the Litany Against the Warp quietly to himself. The warp was calmer and less inhabited, but that didn't mean he was going to throw caution to the winds.

Freya looked up from consulting her auspex.

'The bridge should be right through that door.' She said, indicating the door at the far end of the corridor, before exchanging her axe for a pair of laspistols.

Nayl exchanged his sword for his lasgun again.

'Right, then let's teach whoever told us to desist what happens when you defy Inquisition operatives.' Nayl said, reaching out with his mind and filching the information on how to operate the holographic interface he was presented with from the mind of one of the xenos.

Entering the appropriate sequence, the door hissed open, revealing another of the four-eyed xenos with a rifle-like weapon aimed at the back of a female-bodied xenos wearing some form of full-body suit. On either side of it, three others were in cover.

'Now, you can either surrender, or I can kill the prisoner.' The xenos said, in oddly accented low gothic, probably due to the translator it was using.

'Do it. See if I give a frak. I only need one of you alive for information, and I'm not terribly picky about which one of you it is, or how I get that information.' Nayl responded.

Having already sabotaged their guns using the _objurgation mechanicum_, Nayl decided he could get away with threats.

The xenos fired-  
-and it's gun exploded. It yowled in pain at the explosion, before Nayl shot it square between the eyes.

The others went to do the same, only for their weapons to malfunction, and to be fired on by Freya and K'toia, the latter charging the three on the left when it became obvious his shots were being stopped by some form of shielding the aliens had. The mop-up lasted all of ten seconds, the last of the four-eyed xenos dying screaming as K'toia picked it up, sniffed it, then tore it's throat out with a solid bite. He instantly spat the bloody mess out and took a swig from a canteen at his waist, then spat again.

'I'm not tainting my genes with their paltry DNA.' He said at Nayl's arched eyebrow. 'Their weapons however…'

'Take 'em, let's see if Tu'shak or Romulus can't see what makes 'em tick.' Nayl said, then motioned to the still-kneeling xeno-woman.

'Get up.' He said.

The xenos silently obeyed keeping both hands in view.

'Can you operate the surveillance system?' He asked.

'Yes, sir.' The xenos answered hesitantly, again in oddly accented low gothic, though this one was digitised by it's helmet's speakers.

It crossed to a holo-terminal, and tapped in a few commands.

'How many hostiles are left?' Questioned Nayl when the xeno turned to look at him.

'There're two humans and an unknown in the brig, along with the other captives from the _Tin Trader-'_

'I'm aware of them. They work for me; any more of those four-eyed frakkers?' Nayl asked patiently.

'Yes, one squad has barricaded themselves in the cargo hold, and another is holed-up in engineering, they've jammed the doors, so you'd have to cut-'

'Seal those chambers and depressurise them, vent atmosphere from those rooms if needs be.' Nayl said.

The xeno looked at him for a long moment.

'You got a problem with that?' He asked.

The xenos was silent for a long moment, then tapped in the necessary commands.

Nayl nudged her aside and watched grimly as the xenos in the engineering and cargo bays asphyxiated.

When the last xenos lay still, he touched his vox-bead.

'Talk to me Wilkes.' He said.

+_'Cargo bay secure Nayl, we've got 'bout ten human prisoners, all resistance has been neutralised, any we should be worried about?'+_

'The bridge is secure and we've depressurised and vented atmosphere to the other rooms where hostiles had bunkered down.' Nayl replied. 'What do you think, do we blow this thing to the Golden Throne, or do we put it in the auxilliary bay and let Romulus and Tu'shak take it apart?' He asked.

+'_This ship is too small to use a warp drive, and we're in the middle of interstellar space. I think we should give this tub a closer look.'_+ Wilkes replied.

'Copy.' Nayl said, then switched channels. 'Romulus, I'm opening a line between this ship's network and the _Pursuit, _bring us in.' Nayl gave the xenos a look.

'Open the ship's mainframe to radio channel six-delta-sixty-six.' He said.

The xenos hesitated, then complied.

+'_I have control.'_+ Declared Romulus over the ship's PA system.

'Our work here is done.' Nayl said, then motioned with his rifle. 'Come on.' He said to the xenos.

It complied without argument.

**I'm doing some of these quick so there's some content to read, but it should start slowing up soon.**

**It's getting to **_**that**_** time of year when you're too tired to really be bothered doing much, so writing is becoming a bit of a grind, and then there's homework, and yr. 12 homework load, etc…**

**Pretty much this is a notice that I'm having a low for writing at the moment and school is rearing it's butt-ugly head.**

**Anyhow, thanks again to ColonelMustard1990 for Betaing, and also to the following persons:**

**For Reviewing: Ursakar, Guest, Eipok, MetalKing1417 and Hideout Writer.**

**For the Favourite Author add: CaughtinalandSlide and Yoshtar.**

**For the Author Alert: CaughtinalandSlide and Yoshtar.**

**For Favouriting: Vandar82, CaughtinalandSlide, Oplindfep and.**

**For Following: Ursakar, CaughtinalandSlide, MetalKing1417, Hideout Writer, Eipok and EclipseP****hoenix.**

**That, right there, is probably the most interest a story I've started has _ever_ produced. Not even '_Brothers in Arms'_ got this kind of response.**

**Oh, and for fans of the Fantasy genre, I highly recommend Rachel Hartman's debut novel **_**'Seraphina,'**_** which so far is just an awesome, awesome book and the only romance (of any description) that I've ever willingly picked up, read and **_**liked,**_** which is saying something.**

'**til next time, this A\N slash micro-blog is done.**

**No One-liner Reviews, Thank you kindly.**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter III

The FNG

**Disclaimer: See Chapter One.**

Tiras booted up yet another diagnostic program for her enviro-suit. She was almost certain she was hallucinating this whole thing from an open-air exposure.  
First of all, there was the gigantic dreadnought which had come out of nowhere.  
Then, there was the whole mad episode with the mutant turian, and the two humans storming the bridge. And then the freighter the batarians had been using had been _landed in one of the dreadnought's hangar bays_, and they'd off-loaded, the batarian's other victims looking variously bewildered, scared, curious, happy, and other variations on those emotions, but many of them had been staring.  
Some had been staring at an oddly dressed human with a grizzled face in a black long-coat and an odd looking cap with a winged skull symbol.

But most had been staring,-and Tiras herself couldn't really blame the humans,-at a downright bizarre alien, with four arms, and a serpent-like body.  
It made a point of ignoring all the attention it was attracting, instead choosing to slither apart from them while the hangar's decontamination protocols went about their business.  
The mutant turian was likewise keeping its distance, while the four humans,-five, amended Tiras, upon seeing another one striding up from a gunship that had just landed,-were talking with the human captives.

The captives' spokesman nodded and said something, then shook hands with the strangers' black-haired leader. One of the ex-captives beckoned and Tiras accompanied them as they filed out of the massive hangar.

* * *

'So, did you find anything?' Cerabi asked, reclining on one of the tables in the mess with a goblet of some Eldar drink that approximated wine, but was an order of magnitude more potent.  
Nayl nodded, but he looked uncomfortable and preoccupied.  
'Daemon trouble?' Asked Wilkes, resting a hand on his laspistol.  
'No, to answer both your questions, I skimmed some rather…_interesting_ information from our guests' minds and I've managed to verify it in that 'codex' their spokesman provided; I left a summarised report on your cogitator terminals. Some of the information was…_confronting._'

At the undue emphasis on the last word, the humans in the room exchanged worried glances.

Cerabi shrugged. 'What? 'Confronting,' like having sex outside your species?' She asked with a mischievous smile and winked suggestively at him.  
'Among other things, such things are considered unusual, but it doesn't attract the same attention as it would in our own reality; indeed, such affairs aren't often even secret.' Nayl said. 'Now, someone get me a Bloody Sanguinius, I need a drink before I vomit up my intestines after reading and reviewing that.'

Nayl felt a perverse sense of satisfaction as he felt his team's horror and disgust at this revelation.  
Minor, compared to a lot of other things, but it would cause the most contention, so he felt it best to get it out of the way as soon as possible. The only one not really discomforted was Cerabi, but she'd lived the majority of her life in Commoragh. Interspecies sex was a paltry act compared to some of the depravities committed in that place.

'And we can't deliver the Emperor's sanction to these deviants?' Wilkes asked in disgust.  
'Unfortunately not, but they're a minority; read my summary, it's got most of the particulars.' Nayl replied, downing the drink Cole had just prepared in one go. 'Thanks, Cole, I'll have another.'  
'I don't like this, Nayl, the xenos who came through with us I can stomach,-they know they've earned our suspicion, they're equally suspicious of us. I don't think I could stomach an alien treating me with more than wary respect or,-' Wilkes gave Cerabi a pointed look.  
'Would it really be so evil? You know you want to.' She said innocently, finishing with a sultry grin.

'If it makes you feel better, you're taking this a lot better than Santana.' Nayl said. 'Celestine wasn't particularly impressed either, but Santana was ropable.'  
'Is that going to cause problems?' Asked Tehmujai, looking up from an unidentifiable mess on his plate, that resembled a stew which he was working his way through. 'It might; I'll go check on her now she's had a chance to calm down.' Nayl said, before finishing his second drink before exiting the mess hall.

* * *

Tiras walked down the hall, her mind whirling. She'd been granted her own cabin like the other ex-captives,-who'd apparently reached an understanding with the ship's captain regarding passage to Eden Prime,- but she was restless.

This ship was unlike any she'd ever heard of.

The first difference she'd noticed, beyond the sheer scale of the ship, was the use of brass and bare metal walls, along with exposed pipes and human-skull motifs dotted here and there, including a cybernetic skull inside a cog that recurred consistently near anything mechanical. Another symbol that kept recurring was a base-motif of a two-headed bird with it's wings outspread.

In her quarters, she'd found a computer terminal, but instead of being holographic, it had been purely hardware and it'd been decidedly unhelpful when she'd tried to access anything, though she had no trouble accessing the extranet. It was almost as if the terminal had had a mind of it's own, but a quick scan for any VIs or AIs had come up empty.

Fed up, she'd decided to explore, aided by a rudimentary map she'd managed to wrestle from the computer terminal. The hangar had been sealed, along with another a few corridors behind it, the armoury was likewise sealed, along with engineering, the elevator to the bridge and anywhere else of interest.

Tiras turned left then looked around as the corridor expanded into a large room.  
It was filled with varnished hardwood pews facing a raised dais upon which was a simple pulpit before a similarly simple altar upon which was an icon. It was another two-headed bird, the same motif she'd noted throughout the ship.  
The back wall depicted a huge golden throne upon which sat a human clad in a massive suit of golden armour.  
The scene was depicted in intricate detail and the atmosphere was one of reverence.

'Hey!'

Tiras spun around, startled at the shout. Behind her stood a human woman with a very serious looking gun in her hands and clad in intricate armour painted in black, red, silver and gold. Her head was bare and she looked none too happy to see Tiras.

'Just what are you doing here, xenos?' Demanded the woman. 'The chapel's off limits.'  
'I…I'm sorry, I didn't know…' Tiras said, holding her hands out in a placatory gesture. 'I'll just-'  
'Don't think I'm letting you get off that easy, Cerabi; I warned Nayl you'd try something like this.' Said the woman.  
'What are you-?'  
'Don't play dumb with me. What were you going to do? Deface the mural? Steal the Aquila? Well?' Demanded the woman.  
'I think you might have me mistaken for someone else.' Tiras said calmly. The woman chambered a round into her weapon.  
'Santana!' Barked a voice.

* * *

Nayl crossed his arms as Sasha spun at his call and the xenos stepped to the left to see him.  
'What is going on here?' Nayl demanded.  
'Cerabi decided-' Began Sasha.  
'Cerabi is currently in the mess hall drinking. I just saw her there, _she,-_' Nayl gestured to the alien in the enviro-suit,- 'is the one we found along with the human captives onboard that slave ship.' Nayl replied.  
'Alright, so maybe I was wrong about that.' Santana admitted. 'Xenos are still barred from the chapel, that was the condition Celestine and I set when we joined your little outfit, Nayl.'

Nayl shifted his attention to the alien, which was wringing its hands.

'I don't recall giving you or the others off that slave ship leave to wander.' Nayl said.  
'You never explicitly ordered us to keep to our cabins either, sir.' The alien replied.  
'True.' Nayl said, then addressed Santana. 'This, I think can be excused on the basis of a breakdown in communication, Santana.'  
Santana sighed.  
'I suppose you're right, Nayl.' She said, then turned to the alien. 'My apologies.' She said evenly, then retreated into her quarters and closed the door.  
'Who are you people?' Asked the alien, looking in his direction with a note of bewilderment in her tone.

Nayl rubbed his brow and growled in annoyance.  
'You're determined to explore and cause problems, aren't you?' Nayl asked.  
'I don't want to cause problems, but I do want to know what's going on.' The alien replied.  
'It would be extremely inconvenient for me and my associates if that were known, if I told you, I'd be forced to confine you to this ship, kill you or keep you where I can see you to prevent my ship from being 'appropriated' and to keep our movements hidden from our quarry and for a multitude of other reasons.' Nayl replied evenly. 'Do you still want to know what's going on?'

The alien hesitated. 'What do you mean 'our quarry'?' It asked.  
'We're mercenaries, but our services aren't up for hire from just anyone.' Nayl replied. 'We're currently hunting a man with mass genocide on his mind.'  
'Do you know where he is, or are you scouring the galaxy for him?' The alien asked.  
'We're searching for him,' Nayl replied evenly.  
'Do you mind if I come with you?' The alien asked.

The question threw Nayl off balance.  
'What? Why would you want to join the hunt for a genocidal madman?' He asked.  
'I'm on my pilgrimage, if you're going around the galaxy then there's a good chance you might find something of worth that I'd be able to take back to the flotilla if you didn't need it.' The alien explained.

'There was a lot in that sentence that didn't make sense.' Nayl replied, then paused for a moment before asking: 'Say, for a moment, that I was willing to bring you along, what exactly would you be able to offer? I don't suffer freeloaders. The other captives gave me a great deal of information, star charts and translation equipment,-hence why we're giving them a lift to Eden Prime,-but what can you do that makes it worth bringing you along?'  
'I'm a quarian sir, my people are naturally talented with tech and I'm not too bad in a firefight either.' The quarian replied.

'Hmm…' Nayl said thoughtfully. 'Come with me.' He said, motioning for the quarian to follow him.

* * *

Tiras heard gunshots long before they reached their destination.

They were deeper and louder than any gun she'd ever heard: Belligerent, aggressive and booming, as if the weapon were _daring _enemies to take a hit from it's rounds, quite unlike the tinny chatter of most Mass Effect weapons.

They entered another large room, warmly lit with incandescent lightglobes. Opposite them was a firing range, while the walls were covered in weapons on racks, with bigger ones on benches below them.  
Tiras shivered as she saw a bench with a number of what appeared to be human skulls outfitted with various devices over in a corner.  
_Keelah, what have you gotten yourself into, Tiras?_ She asked herself silently, glad the human couldn't see her staring at the macabre pile of skulls on their bench.

'Wilkes!' Shouted Nayl in a brief pause in the gunfire. The grizzled man Tiras had noticed earlier in the hangar paused in reloading a chunky looking pistol then strode up.  
'Nayl. What can I do for you?' Asked the man in a measured, reserved voice.

'This one wants to come along on our little hunt; I want to see if she can keep up.' Nayl replied, jerking a thumb at Tiras.

Wilkes looked Tiras up and down.  
'What's your name, xenos?' Wilkes asked neutrally.  
'Tiras'Ranma vas Aleia, sir.' Tiras answered automatically. This Wilkes was obviously ex-military, he had the same sort of air about him as some of the older Migrant Fleet Marines who called the _Aleia_ home.

'Tiras, then.' Wilkes said. 'Pick a weapon off the wall, go to the firing range and show us what you can do.'

Tiras turned to the walls and immediately noticed one thing: She didn't recognise any of the weapons beyond very broad classifications like 'pistol' and 'assault rifle'.

A look to the other side of the room revealed a pile of conventional weapons evidently scavenged from the slaver's ship. Tiras appropriated an Avenger assault rifle, along with a Scimitar shotgun, a Hammer sniper rifle and a Predator pistol. She took position at one of the bays and unfolded the Avenger.

'Let's see what you can do then, Tiras.' Wilkes said. 'Five sets of five rounds, we'll check the spread each time.'  
A target swung up from the range's floor, and Wilkes orderd; 'In your own time, go on!'  
Tiras squeezed off a few bursts of rounds from the rifle, and once she was done firing Wilkes indicated for her to collapse the rifle and inspect the target.

'Forty millimeter grouping from twenty-five metres,' Wilkes said as he looked it over. 'If you were one of my old troopers you'd have just about managed to get a pass on the ranges. They're all off to the left, but then again you haven't zeroed the sights, so that's to be expected.'

'Not bad.' Nayl said. 'If you're bringing it into a firefight, make sure you get it adjusted, though. Now, same deal, only this time use the pistol.'

Wilkes and Nayl kept Tiras at the firing range until she'd demonstrated her proficiency with all of her chosen weapons,-setting up a nasty scenario with the sniper rifle, where targets appeared in cover and she had to get headshots. Finally, Tiras collapsed the sniper rifle as Wilkes called halt again.

'Okay, you can shoot. Now, let's see if you can brawl.' He said, motioning to a crash mat, where a armour-plated drone with a pair of shock batons waited.  
'Take a weapon.' Wilkes said, motioning to a rack that held swords, axes, spears and swords that had wicked looking barbs running their length, along with an armoured gauntlet that looked like a pincer and a huge armoured gauntlet that wasn't readily identifiable as a weapon.

In response, Tiras activated her omni-tool and activated a custom-made program that flash-forged a blade.

Wilkes started visibly as Tiras activated the omni-tool, but Tiras didn't pay him any heed as she entered the ring.

'Begin.' Nayl said. At the word, the drone began circling, twirling its shock-batons and leaving arcs of crackling energy in its wake.

It lunged, and Tiras side-stepped, stabbing out with her omni-blade as she did. The drone rolled away, one of its armour plates glowing red around a rent in its armour, before it charged back in.

Tiras was forced to roll under its attack, and stabbed the drone up between the legs off to the side of the groin, crippling it, before rolling to her feet and driving the blade into the drone's cranium. The drone collapsed and Tiras deactivated the omni-blade.

'What do you think Wilkes?' Nayl asked.  
'Sloppy. And if it wasn't for the cutting power of that blade of yours, the drone would've won.' Wilkes opined.

'Alright, one last thing.' Nayl said, motioning back towards the main armoury.

Standing beside a work-bench was a red-robed human. From his back projected a quartet of mechanical arms,-currently folded,-and instead of hair, he had burnished steel cables,-each a centimetre in diameter,-implanted in his head like silver dreadlocks. His eyes looked normal, but glowed with hard blue light. His hands were burnished steel and looked almost skeletal. He looked frightening, but he regarded Tiras with something approaching interest.  
She regarded the man with pity and a creeping sense of disgust.

'Nayl informs me that you have some skill with technology. He has charged me with assessing your claim.' The cyborg said in an oddly modulated almost-monotone, his jaw moving, but his voice obviously mechanical.

'Tiras, this is Faraday Romulus, this ship's pilot and chief technician.' Nayl said.

Tiras wrung her hands anxiously.

'If you have nothing to say, let us begin…'

Romulus's examination was thorough, exhausting, relentless and exasperating. One of his first instructions was to disassemble and reassemble a weapon plucked seemingly at random from the wall. Then, he pulled a box filled with different bits and pieces from under the workbench and gave Tiras half an hour to assemble anything she chose from the parts inside. He questioned her on principles of electronics, had her decrypt security devices and even had her defuse a mock-explosive device. It was well over three hours later that he ran out of ideas.

He paced back and forth, examining her work.  
'Passable handiwork, the auspex unit is positively revolutionary, the decryption was three quarters faster than average scores, along with the time taken to defuse the bomb and adaptivity to unfamiliar technology exceeded expectations…' Romulus turned to Nayl. 'I can't find fault with Tiras'Ranma's performance.' He pronounced.

Nayl nodded, then turned to Tiras.  
'Alright, next time there's some action we'll see how you handle yourself under fire, after that, we'll see.' Nayl said. 'Return to your quarters, or come with us to the mess hall, dinner is nearly done.'  
'I can't eat the same food as humans, my DNA makeup uses dextro-amino acids instead of levo-amino acids like humans.' Tiras replied. 'I'll be in my cabin if you need me.' She said, before departing the armoury, calling up her map and following the waypoint she'd left on her room to navigate.

**Took a while, but here we are again.**

**Once again, thanks to ColonelMustard1990 for Betaing.**

**And thanks to everyone who reviewed, followed and favourited.**

**It's becoming incredibly difficult to keep track of everyone who's following and favouriting, so unfortunately, I'm afraid I'm just going to have to acknowledge my reviewers onlyfor this, along with anyone who's following or favouriting me as an author instead of just the story, because the notifications are just getting buried in the folder I have set aside for those things in my inbox.**

**So I'd like to thank the following for reviewing: Guest, carcturus334, Blinded in a bolthole, Ursakar, Hideout Writer and Warmaster Samiel.**

**Apologies once again.**

'**til next time:**

**No One-liners.**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

Discerning the Future

**Disclaimer: See Chapter One.**

'What the hell are those things?' Asked one of the women from the slave ship, eyeing a servitor in the mess hall curiously.

Nayl had a suspicion she'd be off her dinner if she knew that the finely wrought iron chassis covered the organic remains of a notorious serial killer who's chosen MO had been to poison his victims then stab them to death.

'Drones, like those LOKI security mechs we had on the _Trader_, I'd expect.' Said the group's de facto spokesman.

Wilkes, who was headed to the table Nayl was at, chose to put his two credits in; he was used to keeping guardsmen and people he considered under his purview informed. 'That there is Avarice Knight, a convicted serial killer sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole. He escaped Frosthiem penitentiary August ninth M41.997, killing three prison guards in the process. We apprehended him six months later by which time he'd killed another three people, on top of the ten he'd already murdered prior to his original conviction; deemed too dangerous to be locked up again, he was lobotomised and given over to us in payment. That servitor has been serving in this mess hall for nine years straight.' He recounted in an emotionless, matter-of-fact tone.  
'…You mean that's a _person?!'_Asked the woman who'd originally spoken in horror.  
'It was a psychopath who was about as inhumane as you could get, ma'am. Considering the fight he gave us to take him down and all the people he killed prior, the least he can do is serve food for however long his body lasts. Not like he knows what's going on anymore anyway; what with being lobotomised and all.' Wilkes replied coolly.  
'I've seen other…servitors like him-' Began another man.  
'It.' Corrected Wilkes, 'servitors are bio-mechanical constructs either built from vat-grown bodies outfitted with cybernetics or lobotomised convicted criminals who've committed heinous crimes such as genocide, mass murder, rape-murder, crimes against the state, treason, war-crimes, mutiny or have been convicted of a minimum of fifteen counts of murder.' In the matter-of-fact tone he'd started in.  
'The Alliance's justice system doesn't work like that.' Noted another woman.

'We're not the Alliance.' Wilkes replied.

'Who are you then?' Asked the Spokesman.  
'That's classified above top-secret, son.' Wilkes said. 'I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.'

Leaving the ex-captives to stare at each other mutely in queasy horror, Wilkes took a seat with Nayl and Cole as the servitor that had once been Avarice Knight rolled up with a plate of spaghetti.

'You couldn't have just let them wonder?' Nayl asked politely.  
'They've probably realised something's up by now, if they're as smart as that codex made them out to be, they probably already suspect something.' Wilkes replied, before applying himself to his pasta.  
Nayl shook his head. 'The Imperium is built on ignorance. I don't particularly like it, but it's a fine system for keeping inconvenient knowledge from the masses; that's what we need right now, not every race capable of space flight trying to get their claws on the _Pursuit._' Nayl replied in Eternian-style Gothic, a dialect of Low Gothic used universally throughout the Messiah sector. Local translation equipment had difficulty deciphering it, though plain Gothic came out as a language named 'English', apparently.  
Wilkes shrugged. 'Alright, I'll watch what I say around them, unless you'd rather I channelled the spirit of some of my more _zealous_ former fellows.' Wilkes replied in the same language.  
'That won't be necessary.' Nayl assured him, finishing his food. 'I'll be in my quarters, seeing if I can't discern where Petrov has gone to ground.' He said, exiting the mess hall.

* * *

'Ready to give me a hand, girl?' Nayl asked Fleur as he entered his quarters.  
The little familiar gave a querulous chirp.  
'You'd prefer for me try this on my own and end up exploding into a warp-rift, then?' Nayl asked irritably.  
Fleur chirped in the negative, an octave higher than usual.  
'I thought not.' Nayl said. 'The warp's pretty calm at present, which is why I'm asking for your help; now, if you would be so _very_ kind…'  
Fleur chirped and began hovering in the centre of the room where Nayl had just sat down.  
She landed on his head, wings mantled like a guardian gargoyle and her faceted eyes began to glow an eerie, ethereal hue.

* * *

Nayl breathed long and deep, then exhaled slowly as he tapped into the warp.

Unlike before on the slave ship, when he'd manipulated the warp to jam the xenos' weapons, now he simply looked into it passively, trying to discern the twisted skeins of time. He was no farseer by any stretch of the imagination, but he'd managed to convince Tehmujai to show him the basics of their art, the restless Ranger having trod the Path of the Warlock some time before he'd taken the Path of the Outcast; for reasons he wasn't entirely sure of, he found this maddeningly tedious form of divination easier than trying to divine the meaning of the Imperial Tarot.

Truth be told, he hated divination. He'd likened it to fishing once to Tehmujai: A whole lot of waiting for not a lot of success. For some reason, the metaphor had actually amused the Eldar, despite what he'd been expecting.

As he looked, he discerned the minds of the crew:

The one-track minds of the various mono-task servitors throughout the ship,-many former targets who'd been turned into servitors as punishment after their trials.

He could also make out the bright, foreign, curious minds of the ex-captives in their cabins, all variously puzzling about the ship; what interested Nayl most was their awe at the sheer _scale _she was built on. By their standards, they thought she was a remarkably large dreadnought, which Nayl found amusing. He'd had to keep from laughing uproariously when he'd seen how ridiculously tiny these people built their warships.

Celestine, in the ship's med-bay, using a salvaged 'omni-tool',-as the holographic devices used universally by the denizens of this alternate existence,-guiltily indulging a morbid curiosity regarding the cross-species relations Nayl had mentioned in his summary,-along with following up other facets of it.

K'toia, also, was reviewing the xenos of this new universe, but the Kroot's interest was more focussed on natural abilities. Judging by his thoughts, he was more intrigued by the main source of most of the 'inter-species relations', than repulsed by them.

Haekeer and Romulus were omnipresent throughout the ship, communed with it's spirit, the disembodied Eldar shipmaster,-dead for nearly ten years and trapped within a spirit-stone,- directing the ship's course, while Romulus oversaw the ship's functions.

Marik's presence was confined to the bridge, but he could sense Nayl while he navigated them towards Eden Prime.

Wilkes, Cerabi, Tehmujai, Brekken and Cole were still in the mess hall, sharing a bottle of Frosthiem whiskey from Cole's small bar and swapping war-stories with surprisingly little animosity towards one another, mainly from a decade's familiarity with one another.

Santana was in the chapel, praying to the Emperor for guidance and the fortitude to deal with her current circumstances. Her faith affected Nayl deeply; he had,-briefly,-come into contact with the Emperor when he'd been soul-bound. During that brief eternity of unbearable agony he'd known what it was the Emperor, what His Armies,-what the whole of Mankind,-fought. He still awoke screaming like a child, even now, thirteen years on from the night-terrors the experience had left him with; the horrors of the battlefield and even the atrocity Father Michael had committed were trivial compared to them.

Freya, two, was praying to the Emperor, after the fashion of her people, drinking strong mead and putting her most recent deeds into not-so-poetic verse.

He was aware also of Cereta, Tu'shak and Tiras in the armoury, Tiras examining the extensive armoury Nayl and his band had amassed over the years with near manic interest. Occasionally she would ask the Jokaero or the Sslyth the odd question about the function of a piece of equipment or a weapon and receiving curt, guarded answers in response from Cereta and enthusiastic ones from the Jokaero.

Of Marathik he felt nothing, not that he was surprised by that.

A tickle brushed his mind and he had to restrain himself from pouncing on it, instead watching placidly. He saw a world in his mind's eye, a great black hand descending towards it along with ten oddly organic looking ships. The vision switched to show human civilians being slaughtered by xenos constructs, similar to necron warriors in function, but not in effectiveness. He watched them impale their victims on spikes, before the vision switched again-

-And there he was. Durzo Petrov, in the flesh and cybernetics, along with what appeared at first glance to be a deformed Kroot that had undergone similar augmentation. Petrov looked taller than Nayl remembered, his red robe was gone, replaced by some form of black carapace armour and his servo harness replaced with black metal tentacles. Nayl was willing to bet there was still a phase-blade concealed in his left arm and that his right hand still had a battery of digital lasers concealed within it, however.

The pair of them were seized by some sort of xenos artefact and appeared to suffer a seizure, then the vision shifted again to show a solidly built man with flame red hair, emerald green eyes, a hawkish nose with a jagged scar on his left cheek and a healthy crop of stubble not unlike Nayl's own, along with a black haired man and a woman who could've passed for a Cadian if it weren't for the white and pink carapace armour she wore, all fighting the mysterious xenos machines.

* * *

Nayl's eyes shot open and Fleur chirped curiously.

'You did very well.' Nayl said, stroking her eye-ridges affectionately, before standing as she took to the wing. 'Let's go to the mess hall and get you something nice,' he added as he brushed hoarfrost off his clothes and turning the thermostat up as high as it would safely go to defrost his room.

After rewarding Fleur for her good work in channelling his power, Nayl jogged to the bridge and put an announcement across the intercom, broadcasting to the areas his crew were congregated in: 'All Hunters, report to the briefing room; there's been a development.'

* * *

The _Pursuit's _briefing room was a large room just behind the bridge, equipped with a holo-table, a cogitator bank, comm. suite and adorned here and there by the odd trophy picked up on the Shadow Hunter's missions:

The pelt of a Fenrisian Blackmane wolf sat before a crackling fireplace, while a blow-up of a pict taken just after a successful operation in the Uruk Mine-City to take down a sub-cult of Nurgle that had been plotting to release a plague into the underground metropolis' water supply hung above the fire. It showed Wilkes, Cole, Brekken, Nayl and Tehmujai,-who'd been disguised in a borrowed suit of carapace armour,- being thanked by the planetary governor as well as a pair of Space Marines from the Sons of Thunder's sixth company. Their presence had been a remarkable nod of approval on the part of Chapter Master Kelgin, all things considered.

Nayl currently stood underneath the crossed weapons of the deceased Archon of the Shattered Hand which were mounted on the wall opposite the door. The other Hunters were variously sitting, standing, coiled on the floor or lounging on the table. The only one missing was Marathik and she was nearly there if the heavy metal footfalls coming down the corridor were anything to judge by. The door hissed open and Marathik strode in, her void blade not readily apparent under her metal cape.

She said nothing as she moved to the corner of the room.  
'What has transpired for you to call us here, human?' She enquired.

Before Nayl could speak however, he was interrupted by Romulus,-who was present via hologram- and surprisingly, Tiras.  
_+'What is that thing doing here?'+_ Romulus asked.  
'You never said anything about working with an AI!' Tiras said, sounding outraged.  
'Put a lid on it, both of you.' Nayl replied. 'I'm not particularly keen on the idea of working with a Necron either, but I've got a feeling Marathik's help might be needed on this one.'

Tiras stood up, as if she were going to launch into a speech.

'Sit down; Marathik's presence isn't up for debate.' Nayl said sternly.  
'Going soft on me?' Asked Marathik. 'I'm flattered.'  
'Don't fool yourself; first sign of trouble from you and I'll personally dump you in the plasma reactor.' Nayl replied. 'Now, I've just spent the past hour scrying and for once I've actually got something to show for my efforts…' With that, he crossed to the holo-table and placed his hands on a pair of wraithbone pads.

The pads were a jury-rigged Eldar version of a Mind-Impulse Unit, or MIU and allowed the user to control whatever the MIU hooked into with thought alone. In this instance, it allowed Nayl to project his recollection of the vision he'd had using the holo-table.

When the vision sequence ended Nayl stood back up.

'And you expect us to take this vision as gospel, Captain?' Sister Superior Celestine asked, her red hair framing her serious face and lending her an air of majesty, even out of her power armour. 'We don't even know what planet that was.' Pointed out Santana, with a faint air of distaste for Nayl's display of psychic power.

_+'Oh, but we do.'+ _Said Haekeer, popping up on the idling holo-table and making Tiras shift, as if she would've liked to say something. Haekeer chose to project himself wearing a simple circlet and an elegant robe, quite unlike the advanced flight suit he'd worn as a shipmaster.  
_+'I've matched the continent profile seen at the start of that vision to the northern continent of Eden Prime; with a little luck, we'll get there just before or while they're making planet fall.'+  
_'That's good work Haekeer, how long until we arrive?' Nayl asked.  
_+'About four hours.'+_Haekeer answered after a moment.

Nayl turned to his team. 'Thoughts?' He asked.

'Looks like a sniper's paradise.' Opined Tehmujai.

'From the look of that, there'll be plenty of cover, I reckon a flamer wouldn't go astray.' Cole said.

'If what you saw is accurate Nayl, Petrov has undergone significant augmetic surgery since we last encountered him,-which I'm inclined to put down to a time differential, because that xeno-tech augmentation looked as extensive as the average magos',' Celestine pointed out. 'And you didn't see either those three people fighting those constructs, or us catching up to Petrov and that other creature, it might be best if we steered clear.'

'Excuse me.' All eyes turned from the front and from planning to Tiras, who was standing rather self-consciously and shifting from foot to foot. 'I know what those constructs are, but before I tell you, I want to know who you are and what is going on.'

Nayl met the eyes of his Hunters. 'Tell us what those constructs are first.' Countered Nayl. 'We're not the ones who need to earn trust.' He added as Tiras stopped fidgeting, a sign he took to mean she was about to protest.

Tiras sighed. 'Those constructs are Geth. My people created them three hundred years ago as a cheap labour force.'

'Then explain why they were attacking a human colony.' Growled Wilkes, the tips of his fingers drumming against his laspistol's grip.

'They became self aware, rebelled against us and drove us from our homeworld. No one has had contact with them since. There's no way they've ventured beyond the Veil either.' Tiras replied.

_+'You were experimenting with AI? And you were using them for manual labour? No wonder they rebelled, though I suppose if you had used them for anything else, it would've happened later rather than sooner.'+ _Romulus commented mordantly.

'It was legal; each Geth platform only had a simple virtual intelligence, but there was a neural network that allowed Geth in close proximity to coordinate runtimes so they could perform more complex tasks. But when the Geth's numbers reached a certain critical mass they became self-aware.' Tiras replied.

'What are their capabilities?' Tehmujai asked.

'I don't know!' Tiras exclaimed in exasperation. 'No one has seen them in three hundred years!'

'Cool it.' Nayl said. 'Alright, you've been straight with us, so now let me ask you this: How familiar are you with many-worlds theory?'

**It's been a while.**

**Sorry about that, I've been a bit busy with school and other stuff; The Dawnguard DLC not least among them.**

**So, thanks this time around: Hideout Writer, MetalKing1417, 'Guest', Blinded in a Bolthole, Ursakar, Eipok, E E Merica and ShadowCub.**

**Also, for the Favourite Author add: ShadowCub, Nemesis Quill, bogy shashav, thor2006 and E E Merica.**

**For the Author Alert: ShadowCub, Wondrous-Serendipity, thor2006 and E E Merica.**

**Well, I've little else to say asides from my apologies to those following my other stories for my tardiness in updating.**

**On that note, I'll see you all next time.**

**No One-liners.**


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter V

Eden Burning

**Disclaimer: See Chapter One.**

**A\N: Just a quick note, I'm probably going to deviate from Shepard's dialogue, mainly because this is fan fiction and why the hell not? Might have something to do with not being able to type fast enough to keep up with the subtitles for the dialogue as well, but whatcha going to do?**

'Drift…just under fifteen-hundred k.' Said Jeffrey 'Joker' Mereau from the SSV _Normandy's_ pilot's seat. 'Fifteen-hundred is good, your captain will be pleased.' Buzzed Nihlus, a Turian Spectre sent along 'to look after the Council's investment.' With this comment, the Turian quit the bridge.

'I hate that guy.' Joker muttered quietly.

'Nihlus gave you a compliment…so you hate him?' Asked Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko in confusion. 'You remember to zip up your jumpsuit on the way out of the bathroom, that's good. I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead,-so that's incredible! And besides, Spectres are trouble and I don't like having him onboard.' Joker replied. 'The Council have a right to look out for their investment.' Kaidan pointed out. 'Yeah, that's the official story, but only an idiot buys the official story.' Joker retorted

'What do you think, Commander?' Asked Kaidan. 'There's something going on here, you don't send a Spectre on a shakedown run; especially when you've got reliable sightings of a one-point-four kilometre dreadnought of unknown design in the Traverse.' Marshall Shepard answered with some confidence.

'So, the scuttlebutt on that's true then?' Joker asked. 'Who builds that big, anyway?' He asked rhetorically. 'Someone with a lot of resources.' Replied Shepard grimly.

'Joker? What's our status?' Asked the _Normandy's_ captain, David Anderson. 'All systems running smoothly, we're coming up on a comm buoy now.' Joker reported. 'Oh and heads up, I think Nihlus is heading your way.' 'He's already here, tell Shepard to meet me in the briefing room.' Anderson replied sounding irritated, then cut the link.

'Is it just me, or does the captain always sound angry?' Joker asked. 'Only when he's talking to you.' Kaidan quipped as Marshal headed towards the briefing room.

He was a striking figure, with flame-red hair and bright green eyes with a hawkish nose that had been previously broken on Elysium by a batarian that had tried to rush him, while his right cheek had been cut open a few months earlier from a piece of shrapnel from an exploding Mako on Akuze.

He passed by Dr. Karin Chakwas and Corporal Richard Jenkins,-an FNG Marshal was hoping wouldn't become a KIA if things went south,-arguing about the presence of Nihlus just outside the briefing room and as he stepped inside found the Turian observing the vid-screen in the back wall.

The Spectre turned at the sound of the opening door.

'Commander Shepard. I was hoping you'd get here first. It will give us a chance to talk.' Nihlus said, without preamble. 'The captain said he'd meet me here.' Marshal replied cautiously, seeing in hindsight Nihlus had probably used a voice modulator or something to imitate Anderson's voice. 'He's on his way; I'm interested in this world we're going to,-Eden Prime. I've heard it's quite beautiful.' Nihlus said. 'Apparently it's paradise.' Marshal replied.

'So I've heard,' Nihlus said with a nod. 'It's become something of a symbol for humanity, proof that humanity can not only establish colonies across the galaxy, but protect them. But how safe is it really?' He asked.

Marshal's first thought was that this was some sort of threat. After what he'd seen on Mindoir, he'd been left with a mistrust of aliens which hadn't stood him in good stead on a couple of joint operations he'd participated in prior to Akuze and had even seen him court martialled for killing a batarian pirate he'd recognised from Mindoir when they'd found the four-eyed scumbag on board a captured pirate vessel.

Still, he was a fair man, so he decided to give Nihlus a chance to explain himself.

'Do you know something?' Marshal asked sharply. 'Your people are still newcomers, Shepard. Are your people really ready for this?' Nihlus asked.

'I think it's time we told the Commander what's really going on.' Anderson said as the doors sealed behind him, coming to stand beside Marshal. 'This is far more than a simple shakedown run.' Nihlus said.

'I figured there was something you weren't saying.' Shepard said.

'We're making a covert pick-up on Eden Prime. That's why we needed the stealth systems operational. This comes down from the top, information on a need-to-know basis; A research team on Eden prime unearthed some sort of beacon during an excavation. It was Prothean.' Anderson said. 'This is big Shepard, last time we made a discovery like this it jumped our technology forward two hundred years.'

'Obviously, this goes beyond mere human interests, Commander.' Added Nihlus, doing little to increase Marshal's opinion of him. 'This discovery could affect every species in citadel space.' 'It never hurts to have a few extra hands.' Marshal said with forced cheer.

'That's not the only reason I'm here, I'm here to evaluate you.' Nihlus said.

'Nihlus wants to see you in action, Commander.' Anderson added as Shepard mentally reviewed his recent actions for anything that'd attract the attention of a Spectre. 'Guess that explains why I keep running into him when I turn around.' Marshal said dryly.

'The Alliance has been pushing for this for a while.' Anderson said. 'The Spectres represent the Council's power and authority; if they let a human into their ranks, it'll show just how far humanity has come.'

'Not many people could've survived what you did on Akuze and then hold off a pirate attack a couple of months later Commander, you've got a remarkable will to live and great courage,-useful attributes,-they're why I put your name forward for the Spectres.' Nihlus said, throwing Shepard for a moment.

'I assume this is good for us, Captain?' Marshal asked. 'Getting into the Spectres is often a precursor to a Council seat and it'll give us more respect from the other Council races.' Anderson replied.

He proceeded to outline the mission details,-a fairly standard go in, get 'X' and get out deal,- and also let slip that this would be the first of several missions with Nihlus.

'Alright, let's get this show on the road then.' Marshal said, trying to keep the resignation from his voice. He wasn't really a xenophobe,-or at least, he tried not to let Mindoir polarise his viewpoint,-but he couldn't stand Nihlus.

'Captain, we've got a problem.' Joker said.

* * *

'Anything we should know about this shielding tech?' Nayl asked, indicating the scavenged armour from the slave vessel. 'Kinetic barriers? They're designed to stop solid-shot weapons and shrapnel,-useless against radiation and fire, but good against most other conventional weapons…at least, conventional weapons from this universe.' Tiras said, sounding slightly faint. She'd had a couple of hours to wrap her head around Nayl's revelation regarding their being from a parallel universe thirty-eight and a half thousand years in the future, but it wasn't really enough time to come to terms with it, or its inhabitants:

A zealous, xenophobic human empire, a hyper-ancient empire of once-living beings-turned-AI, an equally ancient empire of psychically attuned humanoids and all the other denizens, daemons, horrors and delights of the 41st millennium being the main sticking points.

'What about against las-weapons or plasma weapons?' Nayl asked as he put his hands on his hips and surveyed the armoury's walls. 'If you mean laser weapons, kinetic barriers are useless against them, but they're mainly used as point defence turrets on star ships…don't tell me you have man-portable laser weapons?' Tiras asked.

'Standard issue in the Imperial Guard; they're okay guns, but against armour and anything tougher than a human they're only good in massed numbers. In fact, they're so bad they've earned the nickname 'flashlights,' to give you an idea of their comparative effectiveness to say, a bolter.' Cole said with a derisive chuckle.

'After that slave-ship, I think we'll do just fine with lasguns; Tehmujai, you might want to bring your whole arsenal just to give us a bit of extra kick, in case we run up against something the lasguns live up to their reputation against.' Nayl said. 'Cereta, for similar reasons, I want you to bring the heavy bolter.' He added to the Sslyth, who immediately moved to where the massive gun sat on a bench all of it's own.

K'toia was already kitted out in the same gear he'd worn to board the slave-ship, only now he was suited up in scavenged flak armour.

'Vetoed.' Said Tehmujai.

The armoury went still and Nayl turned to face the mercenary ranger. 'Excuse me?' He asked politely. 'You heard me, Nayl: I'm vetoing your load-out and team composition.' Tehmujai said evenly. 'And what do you suggest?' Nayl asked.

'We're going to need to move fast. K'toia I have no problems with; Tiras knows more about our apparent enemies than any of us at present and this will be a golden opportunity to evaluate her skills; but Cole and Cereta?' Tehmujai shook his head. 'We should exploit our foes' weakness to laser weapons as much as we can and Cereta isn't as fast as the rest of us, I suggest you take Freya and Wilkes instead and I will bring a scatter laser platform to fill the-' 'That thing does not have a very good track record, if I recall. The gene stealer cult on Anathis Prime? It was disabled by a _stub-round _in the opening seconds of our attack. On Pandora Iota, it was disabled by a _squigchewing through its targeting system, _while we were falling back and I don't think I need to remind you of what we had to do to get out of the Hive Spire. And how am I _ever_going to forget Ursa Minor Secundus?' At the mention of this, every Hunter in the armoury,-minus Tiras, Cerabi and Cereta,-winced.

'You're alive still, yes?' Tehmujai asked rhetorically. 'I nearly had my balls bitten off by a Wych afterwards.' Nayl replied dangerously.

Even though the incident hadn't been _entirely _due to the weapon platform's malfunction, Tehmujai still looked sheepish. Mainly because it'd been his suggestion to engage the services of a Haemonculus to clear up the aftermath and had started the whole misadventure in Commoragh.

'Look, I've worked the bugs out of it and I've managed to install a shimmer shield, so it's a lot more durable now.' Tehmujai stated in a conciliatory tone.

Nayl's eyes narrowed. 'If that gun platform of yours fails one more time; I'm dumping it out into deep space.' He said flatly.

While he'd been speaking, Wilkes and Freya had been surreptitiously donning their armour. Nayl hated it when Tehmujai vetoed his orders, but considering the Eldar had,-to his certain knowledge,-spent time as a Striking Scorpion, Dire Avenger, Shadow Spectre, Fire Dragon and a mariner before taking the Path of the Wanderer and thus could've qualified as an Autarch if he'd had any interest in command. He knew what he was talking about.

The one time Nayl had ignored Tehmujai's advice had been on Aur'unva and had resulted in the death of a platoon of allied guardsmen who'd been deployed as a distraction. The op had been successful, but Nayl had taken Tehmujai's advice since his plans usually involved less unnecessary casualties and collateral damage.

Freya had exchanged her fur-lined flack armour for rune-inscribed carapace plate that had a stylised wolf painted on the left pauldron. She was still in possession of enough knives to equip a small platoon and had a quiver stuffed to bursting with tomahawks, along with a twin-bladed battleaxe over her back in addition to a lasgun and a pair of laspistols at her sides. A second bandolier was filled with charge packs and an assortment of grenades.

Wilkes had changed his stormcoat to an armoured version and donned a heavier chest plate. He'd also taken a lasgun and a hand flamer along with his usual laspistol and power sword.

Nayl gave the wall another look, then shrugged and took his pulse rifle before eyeing a Graia-pattern Mk-IIb Vengeance Launcher.

Unlike the original, this one had a drum-magazine and the 'b' variant could fire specially manufactured clusters of micro-grenades. Of course, it was a bulky weapon and there was every chance the shields these people used would simply deflect the charges.

With a shrug, he palmed a pair of hot-shot pistols he'd 'acquired' when he was twenty, from a storm trooper sergeant who'd decided he wasn't taking orders from an Inquisitor's pet mercenary instead. In addition, he grabbed a Arbites' shotgun along with a case of shells.

Meanwhile, Tehmujai had been ritually donning his armour with Cerabi's help. '…I shall see not with my eyes, but allow Khaine's gift to guide me.' He intoned as he donned his helmet, adorned with the usual adornments of a ranger and unusually, a pair of Scorpion mandiblasters and a sensor-mane.

He stood, having completed the war-mantra, went to the wall and claimed his chosen armament: His long rifle, a witchblade, a shuriken pistol, a fusion gun, a belt of plasma grenades and the control gauntlet to a weapons platform more commonly seen controlled by Guardian Defenders, which he deftly strapped to his left wrist.

He fell in beside Nayl, who in turn motioned them to the hangar.

* * *

+'_Exiting the warp in three…two…one…_'+ Intoned Romulus, then they were once again among the stars and immediately intercepted the binary-equivalent of pants-shitting fright from a number of ships patrolling the system, however, scans didn't show any ships correlating the description Nayl had provided. Yet. With this in mind, Romulus opened a broad-frequency hail to the patrol ships.

'Attention Systems Alliance vessels, this is the _Relentless Pursuit_. Do not be alarmed.' Romulus began and felt a brief flicker of amusement. Here he was, piloting an Imperial corvette designed for the sole purpose of waging war and he was declaring peaceful intentions. Well, relatively…until those AI-abominations showed up with that heretic Petrov. 'Our intentions are non-hostile and we have armed no weapons systems. We wish to negotiate. Please respond. Over.'

On the forward view screen, Romulus observed three tiny, too-sleek and woefully under-gunned ships form an arrowhead between a planet he identified as Eden Prime by the profile of the landmasses.

+'_Relentless Pursuit,_ this is Commander Warren Daniels, of the Human Systems Alliance Navy aboard the frigate _Banockburn_, what is your purpose here, and _what the fuck _did you just do and _how the fuck_ did you do it?'+

'We have intelligence which suggests that this planet will soon be attacked by a fleet of approximately eleven ships' worth of AI-constructs designated 'Geth'. As far as we can determine, they're looking for some form of ancient beacon of alien origin.' Romulus replied, being careful not to use 'xenos' as the descriptor for the alien device. From what he'd seen from the codex, these people were far less sophisticated than the average Imperial in their language.

He did, however, file Commander Warren's supposed expletive away for future use.

+'Right, the Geth are going to attack.'+ The Commander said sarcastically. +'And I've got a date with a couple of Asari twins tonight.'+

At this flippant mention of the heretically biological, Romulus felt a palpable urge to charge the lance batteries, but he squelched it in favour of keeping the Commander talking while Brekken prepared for take off. Judging by the equipment Nayl had commandeered, he was expecting to weather the Siege of Terra all over again.

Tarantula type-Bs, several supply drops, and the _Swift Justice_was equipped with Skyhammer missiles along with the usual missile pods and the chin mounted multi-laser and shoulder-mounted lascannon.

'Perhaps this will convince you otherwise, Commander.' Romulus said preparing to send a doctored version of Nayl's vision, which made it look like battle-plans- -Then his scanner arrays lit up like a Candlemas display.

'Sensors are indicating a flotilla of eleven,-no, twelve,-ships have just entered the system and aren't answering hails.'

+'Got 'em.'+ Warren replied.

'I estimate that you have maybe ten minutes before they launch an assault; just enough time to alert the colony and scramble some semblance of a defence. We're dispatching a support contingent now.' Romulus replied, then gave Brekken the green-light to launch as they drifted into range for the _Justice_ to reach the atmosphere.

* * *

In the _Swift Justice's_ hold, it was cramped.

A pair of monotask servitors, six supply-drops and four type-B Tarantula deployable combination missile launcher\heavy bolter turrets took up the front half of the hold while the rear was given over to the ground team:

Tiras, Nayl, Wilkes, Freya, Tehmujai and K'toia sat silently in the hold, eyeing the seventh occupant who was taking up most of the remaining space:

That occupant was Marathik.

The necron had been waiting in the hold for them and as she'd been cradling a Rod of Covenant along with the weapons she'd had when she came aboard, Nayl had warily invited her to join them.

Now, five minutes later as they were entering the atmosphere, Tehmujai broke the silence.

'What exactly do you plan on doing? We'll be fighting AI-platforms, the humans on this world have likely been warned to prepare by now so they're not likely to trust your presence.' 'I intend to quickly put an end to your target's life. The sooner he dies, the sooner we don't have to worry about Tsara'noga, the Outsider as you call it.' Marathik replied. 'That's assuming Petrov deploys. And if he's found one of the Outsider's servants already, we're still going to have to prevent it from using the info Petrov passed it.' Nayl pointed out. 'Killing Petrov would prevent him from passing anymore information, assuming he's disclosed his most vital secrets.' Marathik pointed out. 'I'm not denying it.' Nayl said. 'But he'll most likely be with that big black hand-thing I saw in my vision. Until that thing commits itself, you're going to be playing the role of bullet magnet.'

'Bullet magnet?' Asked Marathik in a slightly different monotone. Nayl surmised it was haughty bemusement.

'Yeah, you necrons are notoriously durable. What with those self-repair protocols I figure you can take whatever these 'Geth' can dish out; Bolters pack more of a punch and you can shrug them off no problems.' Nayl replied. 'Plus, you've got the Glowstick of Destiny, an anti-matter crossbow and a void-blade. You're over-qualified for the role of close-assault distraction.'

Marathik made a peculiar noise, a cross between a static hiss and a cogitator struggling to perform a function.

'Coming up on a settlement now, it's adjoining a spaceport where I'm getting readings inconsistent with other local ones. I don't know for sure, but I think it's the artefact Magos C'tanfan is after.' Brekken reported.

'Take us down.' Nayl ordered. 'As for the rest of you, check your guns and get ready to put the hammer down. The Emperor protects.' The other occupants of the hold,-minus the servitors, Tiras and Marathik,-answered according to their beliefs and Nayl clamped down on the urge to denounce Tehmujai and K'toia's chosen patrons. He was well-practiced at it by now, though he hadn't always been.

The restraining harnesses released and the cargo door lowered as the _Justice _went into a hover.

* * *

Colonel Peter D. Dickson wasn't in a good mood.

He had fifty credits riding on the game he was watching back in his office and apparently, some shit-for-brains pirate armada had descended on Eden Prime intent on sacking the colony.

Most likely because of That Damn Beacon.

And to make matters worse, that dreadnought that had been reported halfway to the Asgard System had just appeared above, right in front of Commander Daniel's squadron. As Dickson stood waiting in his hastily donned armour, he tapped the butt of his Carnifex in irritation as the most god-damn archaic dropship he'd ever seen engaged it's vectored engines and the rear loading ramp lowered.

And out stepped a fucking circus!

One of the dreadnought's 'support team' was a giant robot with some ridiculous looking staff, another was a deformed turian in what looked like Kevlar plates, a third was wearing a cloak and his armour was just plain weird, the fourth was a quarian, while the fifth, sixth and seventh were human, but they were arguably the most bizarre of the bunch:

The first chick was wearing blue-white armour engraved in what looked like Viking runes and was carrying enough axes to outfit a company of marines as lumberjacks, the second guy looked like a Russian commissar who hadn't had his morning vodka and…

…Okay, maybe he wouldn't say anything about the last guy:

He was about six foot two, clad in jet black armour with a full-face helmet, had a pair of very big, nasty looking guns across his back and was carrying a sword like the pissed off commissar. As he moved and his shoulders came a little more front-on, Dickson saw a stylised dragon picked out in red emblazoned on his left pauldron and on his right was a skull that looked vaguely human but with sharper teeth, inside a crosshair with three holes weeping purple-black above the right eye, with a pair of crossed swords pointing down in the background.

As the circus stepped out of the dropship, it took off and took up a holding pattern above the settlement.

'I take it you're the CO around here?' Questioned the man in black armour. 'Colonel Peter Dickson, now what do you want? I've got a game to get back to.' Dickson asked, not bothering to hide his irritation. 'I'm giving you all the advance warning I can to initiate a colony-wide lockdown. You need to get people to safety, this place is about to come under attack.' The one in black armour replied.

'Uh-huh. And why should I take your word for it?' Dickson asked. 'Look Colonel, I don't waste my time on bullshit. Even with my ship up there, your defence ships are outnumbered and outgunned and even if my pilot can draw their attention, this colony is going to get hit. I'm trying to minimize civilian casualties here. We didn't really have to come down and lend support, but something tells me that without it, things aren't going to end too well.'

'Who the hell are you anyway?' Dickson asked. 'Logan Nayl. Mercenary. Just humour me on this; if I'm wrong I'll take the fall and then I'll be out of your hair. If I'm right, then this isn't going to be a total massacre.'

Dickson thought about it for a second, then he saw something entering atmosphere as Daniels shouted over the airwaves: _+'Dickson! Wake up down there, you've got incoming hostiles! Don't know what the hell they are-'+ _Then the line went dead.

Dickson paled, then started barking orders into his headset, and as Nayl's dropship moved to try and intercept the incoming ship, the raid-sirens began blaring.

* * *

If this planet had've been in the Imperium, Nayl would've let Wilkes shoot this 'Colonel Dickson' for incompetence. As it stood, he was all Nayl had to work with.

The Colonel finished barking orders, then Nayl started.

'I've got a few deployable turrets on that dropship of mine, where do you want 'em?' He asked. 'You're going to have to wait until we see where these hostiles land, I've got people heading for mounted guns now.'

As he spoke, another two of the unidentified ships began entering atmosphere and the first one brushed past the _Justice_ with rents streaming smoke in it's armour.

'You worry about getting people to safety, we'll worry about keeping your uninvited guests occupied.' Nayl said, drawing his lasgun.

* * *

A few minutes later, Nayl, Tehmujai and Tiras skidded into cover behind a pallet of permacrete blocks and beheld the geth. To Nayl, they looked a lot like Tiras, only with a torch instead of a head and with visible wiring running along their bodies.

They had a small group of the PDF troopers pinned down and would wipe them out momentarily if someone didn't intervene.

Nayl nodded to Tehmujai, who unslung his long rifle and inputted a command into his control gauntlet, causing the weapon platform collapsed on his back to disengage and open, before it began laying a withering barrage of lasbolts into the geths' right flank. Tehmujai fired, dropping a slightly larger geth with a shot that took it in the 'neck'. The machines hunkered down and split their attention between the PDF and Nayl's force, forcing Tehmujai to duck down.

Nayl fired a burst of plasma from his position as Tiras used her omni-tool to lob something at the geth, causing a localised electric pulse which shorted out another of the constructs, before she started firing with her assault rifle. Now that the battle was settling into a nice, routine firefight, Nayl was free to start having some doubts about the sub-team make-up.

He'd wanted to split the teams so there'd be a psyker and a sniper in each, so they'd be fairly evenly balanced, but Tehmujai had made the recommendation that he stick with Nayl and Tiras, while K'toia, Wilkes and Freya went off to the other side of the colony while Marathik proceeded as she'd indicated.

He'd made this recommendation with the sort of certainty Nayl had come to recognise as that of one using precognitive skill, but it still struck him as dreadfully risky for the team without the psyker.

A round pinged off Nayl's upper arm and he quit worrying about Wilkes' team in favour of turning the geth that had just put a dent in his right pauldron into molten slag. As the melted geth began to cool, Nayl noticed that for now, they were free.

'Who're you?' One of the surviving PDF troopers asked. 'We're the merc team that just saved your asses. Now focus on getting any civvies to safety; we'll hold the line.' Nayl replied.

* * *

Meanwhile, back aboard the _Normandy_, Shepard, Anderson and Nihlus watched mutely as some guy in a black storm coat shot at something off screen, while bisecting a blurry, grey-black figure with a _freaking sword _in the background, supported by another unidentified crazy charging at something off screen with a pair of _axes_, while an Alliance marine called desperately for aid.

Then the sky parted and a massive _something_ descended towards the planet and the feed cut.

'Rewind and hold at thirty-point-five.' Anderson ordered, and then they stared at the thing descending towards the surface.

'No other ships available, Captain, we're seventeen minutes out.' Joker reported into the silence.

* * *

Romulus swore in pure binary and used this as an attempt to counter-hack the AI runtimes that were attempting to fill the_Pursuit's _systems with malign scrap-code.

It only succeeded in forcing the blasphemous things out, but that was all that was really needed as a macro-cannon round obliterated one of the xenos ships attempting to fly by, weakening their effective intelligence to the point where standard anti-scrap-code algorithms were enough to counter most intrusion attempts, allowing Romulus to return his attention to the field.

At which point the tech-priest cursed in apoplectic fury as he saw the two-kilometre abomination that had neatly used the distraction of it's flotilla of escort ships and their concerted hacking attempts to enter atmosphere.

What it did next was something Romulus had never seen, but to his mind was more appropriate for some tyranid biomonstrosity, than a starship; it set down on the planet's surface, effectively becoming a super-heavy class walker, a titan. And he couldn't even annihilate the blasphemy with the _Pursuit's _lance batteries without potentially destroying the settlement and killing Nayl and the other hunters.

Then Romulus became aware of a redoubled hacking attempt, along with a wolf-pack of five of the escort frigates that had entered system with the two-kilometre ship firing in concert at the starboard-rear void shields using the settlement as a back-drop to discourage a lance-strike that would obliterate them.

They were firing in sequence, one after another so as the last one finished, the first would fire again. In the twenty seconds they'd been doing this, they'd reduced shield-integrity twenty-percent.

Meanwhile, the remaining three with nothing but the void behind them had wisely got out of line of sight from the lance and macro cannon batteries, leaving only the plasma batteries on the ship's topside to fire at them and boil them away bit by bit, and leaving them free to tax the void shields on another front.

Romulus hadn't kept track of the _Banockburn_, more concerned with annihilating the techno-blasphemies in the system, though judging by the three hulks drifting listlessly -in addition to the two ships he'd been responsible for blasting to scrap - the three patrol ships were either destroyed outright or badly crippled.

For the sake of the men and women aboard, Imperial or not, Romulus spared a quick prayer to the Omnissiah it was the latter.

Reluctantly concluding that he wasn't getting out of his current predicament on his own without quitting the field or taking hits that would likely take a long time to patch with the limited resources available, Romulus directed his attention to where Haekeer was managing the sensors and logistics of the battle. '_Shipmaster, much as it pains me admit it, I think I could use your assistance against these blasphemies.'_ Romulus said. Within a microsecond, Romulus had been relegated into the logistics, cyber-defence and intelligence roles while Haekeer had assumed control of the ship's steering and weapons. '_Much as you mightn't like to admit it, we're going to have to reposition ourselves, or suffer major hull-breaches; a couple of which would most likely be a little _too _close to the enginarium._' Haekeer informed Romulus as he split the void shields between points of attack and began repositioning the ship.

* * *

Rafael Brekken was a Glavian. A natural pilot, smart-ass ladies man and as cold as ice in a dogfight. However, he was beginning to hate the annoying eye-like fighters the frigate-titan had just unleashed at him.

They were manoeuvrable, fast, durable, and he wasn't keen on finding out what their laser-faces felt like.

_+'Brekken, we need a strafing run at these coordinates, we have a heavy-walker pinning us to the wall.'+_ Wilkes said over the vox, in the stoic, clinical way that Cadians had for that sort of shit.

A laser blast sizzled past the cockpit. 'Wilkes, I know you're a hard-ass ex-commissar and all, but I've got my own problems at present-' He hit the retro-jets and two of the three eye-fighters hammering on his tail shot past him, only to explode as Brekken sprayed them with the multilaser and lascannon. 'But I'll see what I can do, but you owe me a glass of that 'Castellan's Own Scotch' I know you've got stashed away.'

No reply was immediately forthcoming but the sounds of xenos weapons firing, explosions and the cries of the wounded.

+_'Fine.'+_ Wilkes growled, then muttered a string of curses in Scarus-style low-gothic. Brekken heard some rather uncomplimentary comments about his mother before he cut the link and banked towards where he could see the xenos walker firing bolts of what appeared to be plasma at a building. A plethora of bipedal constructs were also firing at the same target.

Locking the attack vector in, Brekken fired a quick volley of frag missiles around the heavy walker to take out its entourage then, before the missiles kicked up the topsoil, blasted a hole clean through it with the lascannon before pulling out of the strafing run in time to avoid a laser-blast up the tailpipe.

_+'Good work, Brekken, I think you just earned that drink.'+_Wilkes replied. 'I have that on record now.' Brekken said, barrel-rolling out of the way of an unguided missile, then attempting to loop around and hit annoyingly persistent drone. _+'Brekken, we need a supply drop. Now.'+_ Nayl ordered flatly. _+'And before you attempt extortion, remember who provides your pay-check.'+_

Brekken wisely kept his mouth shut and swept around on another vector, instructing the monotask servitors in the hold to ready the first supply drop.

As he swept in low to make the delivery, his sensors indicated a boulder flying out of the ground for no apparent reason and a spike in anomalous energy. The rear-view cameras captured the boulder smash head-on into the eye-fighter and drop the thing out of the sky.

'Much appreciated.' Brekken said as he came out of his shallow dive, the servitors havng confirmed the supply drop was away.

* * *

'Did you see the _size_ of that thing?' Corporal Jenkins asked as he, Marshal Shepard and Kaidan Alenko jogged down an incline.

'Yeah, but the fact it was holding off seven or eight ships by itself was what caught my attention.' Kaidan said. 'That thing must have some very powerful barriers on it to be able to take that sort of punishment and still be able to move and shoot.'

Shepard motioned to Jenkins.

'Move on up, corporal, we'll cover you.' He said, pulling out an Avenger Sniper Rifle.

Jenkins complied, moving towards several upthrusts of rock, then moving towards another a little further onward, when out of a stand of trees a little way ahead came a half-dozen combat drones of obviously alien design. Without preamble, they opened fire on Jenkins and ripped his shields to shreds before he convulsed twice and dropped dead, firing a few shots into the air in death.

Marshal nailed one with his rifle before Jenkins' body had even hit the ground, before venting the heat and dropping another at the same time as Kaidan dropped one with his pistol. The remaining three drones were buzzing closer and in a moment, Marshal and Kaidan would be in a very uncomfortable situation.

'Overload.' Marshal called, activating his omni-tool and sending one of the EMP-grenades at the drones. Kaidan did likewise and then shot the only one not hit by the electric discharge with his pistol.

The pair looked at each other then advanced to where Jenkins had fallen. A quick check of his pulse was all that was needed to confirm he was dead.

Marshal growled, low. 'Damn it.' He said, closing the kid's eyes.

'He never stood a chance, the shots ripped right through his barriers.' Kaidan observed. 'We'll get his body later and arrange a funeral, for now we get to the dig-site.'

So saying, Marshal swapped his sniper rifle for an assault rifle as he and Kaidan headed for the trees where the drones had come from.

* * *

Marathik watched from the spaceport's shadows as she saw the beacon, then with a flicker of thought hacked the facility's security feed. Sure enough, on the extreme edge of one camera she picked the distinctive, hunched figure of a heavily augmented tech-priest.

'Nayl, I have located the target near the extreme edge of the spaceport, near works on an expansion. I am moving to execute now.' She sent through the maddeningly primitive vox-bead Nayl had issued her with. _+'Copy, Marathik, I'm moving in to assist.'+_Nayl sent back.

Marathik didn't dignify this with a response. Petrov would be dead before he was a quarter way there, but he'd undoubtedly thin out the ranks of the primitive AI-platforms that were assaulting the colony. Drawing her Rod of Covenant, Marathik activated her grav-pack and leapt into the air, then triggered a electro-magnetic vortex which functioned as a propulsion system.

This hunt would end here, before it got out of hand.

* * *

'Tehmujai, Wilkes, on my six, Marathik has located our objective.' Nayl reported.

A marine took a volley of plasma to the upper torso from a geth-trooper further down a street. Nayl reached out and smashed it against the wall it was using as cover without even extending his awareness beyond his body. What was left of the PDF had set up a series of choke-points in easily defensible positions around the colony, meaning Nayl and his men had been running back and forth between them to lend an extra gun or two where the fighting was thickest. It had only been about an hour since the first wave, but scores of the AI-platforms had been destroyed,-some had even been piled to patch gaps in barricades.

The initial surprise attack had wiped out nearly half the PDF by Nayl's estimation, K'toia, Wilkes and Freya had managed to rally a force that had been patrolling further out when the attack had hit and had managed to get maybe a quarter of them back to the hastily formed lines before the main body of the attack had hit. Many had died however, but it was still better than it could've been.

Then the main body of the attack had struck.

In addition to the ship that had first entered atmosphere as a vanguard, another two ships as well as the void-capable titan had landed and unleashed all mechanical hell on them. The barricades had been rushed by mechs the size of ork Nobs and pounded relentlessly by heavy walkers and aircraft. Brekken had done his best, but even he could only do so much,-even with having deployed the Tarantula turrets.

The one thing that was keeping Nayl from classifying the whole thing as a gigantic clusterfrak, was the fact civilian casualties,-from what he'd seen,-had been mercifully low. Probably due to the efforts of Colonel Dickson. In hindsight, Nayl realised he hadn't given the PDF enough credit.

They'd fought competently, had showed a grasp of strategy that was woefully uncommon in a colony's PDF force and had the discipline and fight of an Imperial Guard regiment even without a commissar in sight.

'I'm coming with you.' Tiras stated shortly, venting her Avenger. Nayl exchanged the charge pack on his pulse rifle before responding, using the time to consider. On the one hand, she'd turned out to be a very competent fighter and had stood her ground where many civilians would've run away. On the other, no matter how well-trained she was in self-defence, she was still a civilian and it showed in how she was trembling with exertion; she just wasn't used to so much non-stop fighting.

'Not this time, Tiras, stay here and cover K'toia and Freya, I'll call if we need you.' Nayl replied as the commissar and the ranger joined him.

They jumped the southern barricade and headed towards the area the transponder Marathik had consented to wear was broadcasting from. They'd gone two blocks, encountering only very light resistance from a few pickets when Nayl finally made up his mind that something was very off.

'This is too frakking easy, these tin-cans were trying the Valhallan bum-rush on that holdout, where are they now?' Wilkes asked.

An ear-splitting shriek of something rusty retracting came from all around, followed by a chorus of raw-throated, moans and growls.

'Wilkes. You jinxed it.' Tehmujai said scoldingly, shouldering his long rifle in favour of his fusion gun, which he then dialled to the wide-blasting 'shotgun' mode used against mobs of infantry, instead of the standard, focused anti-armour 'beam', while at the same time Wilkes pulled his hand-flamer and Nayl grabbed his shotgun.

Sure enough, out of the side streets a mob of black-grey creatures vaguely similar to desiccated humanoids shambled towards them.

'Zombies…_shit_.' Nayl spat, then opened a channel to K'toia, Freya and Tiras. 'Team two, rally on our position, the geth have deployed what appear to be zombies against us.'

_+'We're on our way.'+ _K'toia replied, as Nayl emptied a hail of buckshot into the face of one of the monstrosities that got too close.

He noted that they appeared to be outfitted with arcane cybernetics, the likes of which he'd never seen before. He snapped a pict with his helmet's camera a second before he blew the thing back to the warp, aware of Wilkes and Tehmujai doing similar as he decked a third and kicked a fourth away.

Where were they all coming from?

As Wilkes dodged out of the way of a flailing claw, Nayl saw one of the things impaled on a spike, which retracted as he watched. With a thrill of horror as one of the things rested his shotgun from his grip, Nayl realised the geth had gathered the bodies of the dead and impaled them on those spikes, which had then transformed them into these…_things_.

As Nayl threw off two aggressors, whipped out his hot-shot pistols and blew the things' heads off with a pair of shots, then coldly began shooting the other things in the mob, one of them jumped on his back and dragged him to the ground, before out of nowhere, Tiras blasted it off of him with her shotgun. Nearby, Freya and K'toia were also busy tearing the cyber-zombies apart in close-quarter combat.

'Advance, we're just going to end up bogged down if we try and fight them all.' Nayl ordered and without much in the way of acknowledgement, the team formed up in a delta formation, with K'toia advancing backwards, alternately shooting the zombie-things down with his kroot gun or hacking them apart with its blade attachments.

* * *

Marshal drew his sniper rifle again as he, Kaidan and one of the marines he'd seen in the distress call, a Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, exited the remains of the excavation camp.

'Hey, Williams?' Kaidan asked. 'Sir?' Williams replied as she scanned the area for anymore of the hideously altered colonists or geth troopers. 'In the distress call, in the background we saw a guy in a black storm coat and a woman with a pair of axes laying into the geth. Do you know who they were?' The Lieutenant asked. 'Oh, those two.' Williams said, shaking her head. 'They came out of nowhere, but from what I heard from Colonel Dickson before the comms went dead, they're part of a mercenary group that showed up just before the geth hit. They just also happen to call that dreadnought that that patrol ship saw out near the Asgard System home.'

'Do you think they have anything to do with this attack?' Marshal asked. 'No, sir, according to Dickson, they were trying to give us advance warning about this attack. I guess Commander Daniels didn't like the messenger…' She trailed off.

They'd just crested a hill and were looking down on the spaceport, in the background, the massive object that had been descending in the final seconds of the distress video was standing in pride of place like some ominous monolith.

Something about it halted them in their tracks, and as they watched entranced, a single pistol shot rang out, snapping the three soldiers out of their open-mouthed gaping and sending them running to the nearest available cover.

Marshal looked down the scope of his sniper rifle and observed that only a small force of geth and the husk-creatures,-which were currently impaled on spikes,-were in evidence.

He looked up to the completed part of the mag-rail construction and saw something that made him look away from the scope, give it a quick wipe, then look again to be sure he wasn't seeing things.

On the raised platform was a badly damaged metal construct, quite unlike the geth, that appeared to have been torn apart with nothing but brute force. Nearby, he saw something else.

'Son of a bitch.' He swore. 'Nihlus is down.'

**So, long delay.**

**I hope you all think it was worth it.**

**I extrapolated the forces shown on Eden Prime a bit, 'cause it kind of fit:Soon as you hit Therum, the team know what Armatures are and there's a codex entry for Hoppers.**

**So, logically the Alliance must've encountered those two units before Therum.**

**Only documented place that had been hit by the Geth was Eden Prime.**

**So, I think I have some lee-way with force-deployment here.**

**Especially since the Hunters had las-weapons AND a Valkyrie to back them up.**

**As to acknowledgements:**

**I'd like to thank Eipok, bogy shashav, ShadowCub, Blinded in a Bolthole, WarmasterSamiel, edboy4926 E E Merica for reviewing.**

**So, with that out of the way, I'll see you all next time.**

**And remember:**

**Detailed reviews with constructive criticism result in a better story.**

.


	6. Chapter 6

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Chapter VI

The Start of Something

**Disclaimer: See Chapter One.**

Marshall Shepard, Kaidan Alenko and Ashley Williams approached where Nihlus had fallen cautiously. Having just eliminated a geth patrol and encountered some civilian survivors,- whom Shepard had smooth talked into handing over a Stinger Mk-II pistol, a combat scanner and the name of their contact who worked for the smuggling ring who'd stashed the equipment in the shed in the first place,-they were ready for trouble.

The trio approached the dead Spectre first, Shepard examining the bullet hole in the back of his head. 'This must've been that shot we heard.' He mused, then glanced at the massive construct that was lying in three separate pieces nearby.

It was missing an arm and a leg, but if it had've been whole and standing, it would've stood chest and shoulders above him.

'Have a look at this.' Kaidan said, indicating a massive, over-ornate staff with black projections near the ends, the ones on one end flaring further than on the other. Green energy flicked across the projections' surface sullenly. Shepard looked the staff over curiously, then blinked as something bright shone in his eye.

On reflex, he dived backwards, bringing his pistol up in a two-handed brace, firing at the point the laser-dot had originated from until his pistol overheated. When he looked around, he saw a large, gecko-like creature kicking feebly in a smear of white fluid.

He fired three rounds into its 'head' and it stopped twitching.

'Must be some sort of Geth sniper, keep your eyes open.' Marshal ordered, getting to his feet, looking at the spot where he'd been standing. It was blackened and still smoking slightly from where the thing's shot had impacted.

'Movement! Behind those crates.' Ashley barked out, shouldering her assault rifle. 'Come on out with your hands up.' She ordered.  
'Don't shoot, I'm human, I'm unarmed.' Called a man as he crawled out from a gap between two shipping containers.  
'Who're you? Did you see what happened here?' Marshal asked, indicating the dismembered synthetic and the dead Spectre.  
'My name's Powell. That big robot tried to ambush some psycho who'd gone and rebuilt his face and half his body with cybernetics. He killed everyone else hiding around here. Would've done the same to me, only that robot blindsided him and was getting ready to kill him, then he got hit by a biotic attack out of nowhere and the cyborg ripped it apart.' The man explained. 'I'd managed to hide over here in the confusion, which is why I'm still alive.'

'What about him?' Marshal asked, indicating Nihlus.  
'The other turian shot him.' Powell said. 'The one that shot your friend got here first,-he was the one that dropped that robot,-then your friend showed up, he seemed to know him, called him Saren, your friend let his guard down, then Saren shot him in the back of the head. Then the cyborg came back and said something then they left together.'  
'Do you know where the beacon was taken?' Kaidan asked.  
'Over on the other platform, that Saren guy and the other…thing headed that way.'

Marshal nodded. 'Well, you're probably the luckiest bastard going right now, but tell me, are you Cole's contact for the smuggling ring?' He asked.  
'What? No…I' Powell spluttered. 'What does it matter now?' He asked. 'Everyone's dead.'  
'Smuggle any weapons?' Marshal asked sternly. 'Anything we could use against the geth?'  
'A shipment of grenades came through last week, nobody notices if a few things go missing from the military shipments.'

By this point, the three Alliance marines had lowered there weapons, but at this Ashley brought her rifle back up.  
'We're out here trying to protect your sorry ass and all you can think of is how you can rip us off? You son of a bitch!' She exclaimed.

Shepard pulled her gun down before she did something drastic. 'He's not worth it Williams.' He said derisively.

'You're lucky the Commander's here.' Ashley said threateningly. 'Hand over those grenades.'

'They're yours. Take 'em, my smuggling days are over, I swear.' Powell said, fishing six grenades from various pockets on his person.

Marshal paused for a moment thinking. _Aw, what the hell? He's probably got something else…_

'A lot of marines died here today, Powell. These grenades could've come in handy.' He paused for effect. 'If I were you, I'd think of some way to make it up them.'

Powell's guilty expression said it all.

'There is something else…experimental tech, top of the line probably worth a fortune.' He admitted, pulling a small, modular device from his pocket. 'Take it, I didn't want anyone to get hurt, I swear.' He said, almost babbling. 'If you want to get to the beacon, take the cargo train to the other dock!'

He scurried away.

'Let's move.' Marshal said, taking out his Lancer, after fitting the explosive mod to his grenade despenser.

It was at that moment that from the other side of the crates, not too far distant from them came the groans of husks, then a bellowed oath. 'Don't these things quit?!' Someone shouted. This was followed by the bark of a shotgun.

The next moment, a motley crew of strangely dressed humans and at least two aliens, one Shepard identified as a quarian, while the second looked like a deformed turian came into view from further inside the settlement, pursued by a mob of husks.

Marshal, Ashley and Kaidan raced towards the fight which looked as if it were about to devolve into an all-out melee.

'Rank fire! Rank fire, dammit!' Ordered a man in black armour. On cue, the motley collection of individuals formed up shoulder-to-shoulder, the quarian noticeably taking a second to fall in beside the mutant turian, before the group opened fire with whatever weapon they had to hand. One of them, apparently had a flamethrower and used it to deadly effect, dousing the husks in burning fuel while the others mowed them down with various flavours of automatic fire, a lot of which Marshal didn't recognise.

In short order the husks were little more than a pile of emaciated cyborg corpses.

The group turned as Marshall and his squad mates approached.

* * *

Nayl gave the three who were approaching a quick once-over:

Soldiers, judging by the armour and weapons and their stances spoke of discipline.

'Are you alright?' Asked the one in the middle, apparently the leader.  
'We're fine, just putting those poor bastards out of their misery.' Nayl replied stiffly. Best to er on the side of over-formal until he got this man's measure.  
'I take it you're the mercenaries that warned the colonial defence force about this attack?' The leader asked.  
'Tried to. Dumb frakker in charge of the defence fleet didn't believe us until these tin-heads were in-system and the Colonel was only slightly better.' Nayl replied. 'Name's Logan Nayl, by the way.' He added.

'Commander Marshal Shepard.' The red-headed leader replied briskly.

Nayl nodded as he saw something behind Shepard and his team.

'Throne of Terra.' He swore quietly. 'Did you take down that big silver one?' Nayl questioned.

'No, it was like that when we got here, a dock worker said that some psychotic cyborg and a turian ripped it apart, then headed towards the other dock after killing him,'-Shepard gestured to the dead body of an alien that looked like a deformed kroot.

Nayl walked past Shepard and approached Marathik cautiously, then knelt down and knocked on her head a few times, to no effect. He frowned beneath his helmet, then laid a solid kick into her chest.

For whatever reason, the green wych-fire in her eyes flared into life again and she groaned.

'What the frak happened? I thought you said you could handle the bastard?'  
'It appears your renegade has been significantly augmented…' Marathik replied blearily. 'And he's found himself an accomplice.'  
'Wonderful.' Commented Nayl.

'Initiating critical damage protocols…' Marathik said in a flat automated tone, before seemingly phasing out of existence.

'What was that all about?' Shepard asked. 'What's going on?' He added in a sterner tone.  
'That,' Nayl said with the barest trace of irritation in his voice, 'was about a human who reconstructed himself with cybernetics and somewhere along the line, went homicidally mad. Me and my band were hired to kill him.' He replied, deciding to go with the technically true version.

'And that synthetic?' Shepard asked.  
'Is a member of an incredibly ancient race that gave up their organic bodies for synthetic ones and who's technology far, far eclipses anything you've ever heard of.' Nayl replied.

'You seem pretty familiar with it. Who are you?' Marshal asked suspiciously.  
'Logan Nayl. Leader of the Shadow Hunters merc band. Thought we'd already established that; If you've got questions, later would be a better time to ask them.' Nayl replied, then blinked open his comm-link.

'We could use your help, we're trying to secure an artefact which we believe is what the geth are after.' Kaidan said.  
'And our target is probably after it too. We're not catching 'em on foot though.' Wilkes said.

Nayl closed his comm-link as the sound of VTOL engines reverberated through the area.

'You want to get there, come on.' He said, motioning to the _Swift Justice, _which had landed just clear of the construction work. 'Wilkes, you and K'toia stay here and continue lending support to the garrison, Tiras, Tehmujai, Freya, pile in.' Nayl paused as he made to follow his team. 'Commander, if you want to get to that beacon quickly, I suggest you hitch a ride with us.'

Shepard hesitated, then motioned for his two subordinates and the three fell in step beside Nayl.

'Who're you two?' Nayl asked, nodding at the woman and the black haired man on either side of their CO.  
'Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, Alliance Marines.' The dark haired man replied.  
'Ashley Williams of the 212.' The woman replied.

Nayl nodded, quietly chuckling about the strange coincidence that he found himself fighting beside a soldier from a unit with that particular designation. It was just so…improbable.

* * *

Durzo Petrov was a former tech-priest. He knew engines.

So when one of the geth-constructs chattered something about picking up aircraft engines via it's audio processors, Petrov listened. And he two, heard the tell-tale whine of a Valkyrie's VTOL engines closing in.

'Down!' He called to his fellow disciple as he hunched as low as he could behind a convenient partition on the train.

His fellow disciple, a turian designated 'Saren Arterius', stood tall in the middle of the lead platform warming up his biotics as the black silhouette of the abominably modified Valkyrie gunship _Swift Justice_ came thundering after them.

* * *

+_'Nayl, guess who I've got a targeting reticule hovering over.'_+ Rafael said over the intercom.  
'Petrov?' Nayl enquired, though he could already tell from the vindictive tone to Rafael's voice.  
_+'Yep.'_+ The Glavian replied.  
'Light the bastard up.'

* * *

Petrov watched with a peculiar feeling in what remained of his organic abdomen as a multi-laser bolt struck Saren in the torso through his biotic barrier and sent him lunging for cover, before he hurled a biotic attack at the Valkyrie, the shifting mass effect field writhing across its adamantine hide like fire.

* * *

'Oh, you did _not _just throw that _blue shit _at_me._' Rafael muttered to himself as the blue energy continued to dance across the cockpit, doing Throne-knew-what to the canopy's integrity.

Then the synthetics on the train opened fire, even as Rafael continued to rain multi-laser fire on their positions.

In reply to this, he sent a quartet of frag rockets into them.

* * *

Petrov chattered invective in pure binary as his newly-installed kinetic barriers absorbed a pounding from shrapnel as four rockets impacted among their geth guards.

_This is getting ridiculous!_ Petrov thought savagely, then activated his newly-acquired omni-tool. Time to make these Hunters choose between their principles and their paycheck.

If Petrov had still been capable of smiling, there would have been a insane, wicked smile on his lips. Instead his facial mechadendrites squirmed as he sent an activation signal to atomic charges set up on a dock further back. Ideally, the charges would've been spread around the colony to maximise damage and minimise the risk of someone defusing them all, but it was too late for that now. Instead, the thermonuclear charges would serve as a distraction.

* * *

+'_Nayl, we've got a problem. I just detected an increase in gamma and beta radiation to above-ambient levels from that last dock we passed.'+_ Rafael reported.  
'He just armed an atomic charge, didn't he?' Nayl queried in exasperation.  
+'_No, it appears he armed _six _atomic charges.'_ Rafael replied after a pause, presumably to check his auspex readout.  
'Alright, put us down at that dock. Bastards' won this round.' Nayl ordered.

'You're just going to let them get away?' Ashley questioned incredulously.  
'We can either catch him and die in a nuclear fireball, or we can disarm the charges, save the colony, _not _die in a nuclear fireball and they get away. It's really not that difficult a choice to make when you think about it.' Tehmujai replied from across from her.

'Tiras, know anything about bomb-disposal?' Nayl questioned.  
'If it has a timer, I can disarm it.' The quarian replied firmly, though there was a trace of unease in her voice.

'Anyone else know anything about bomb disposal? All we need is for our bomb-expert to take a round and be incapable of continuing the mission.' Nayl asked.  
'Yeah, but since when were you in charge?' Kaidan challenged.  
'My dropship. Of course, if you've always secretly wanted to die in a nuclear explosion, you're free to wait at the LZ.' Nayl replied.  
'Right, we're going to split into small groups; that way even if there's resistance, we're not going to end up bogged down until these bombs go off; Hunters, half-armament: One sidearm, one longarm, we need to move quick on this one.' Nayl said.

'I'm keeping you where I can see you.' Shepard stated, his eyes daring Nayl to object. 'Just keep the geth off me while I take care of the bombs. Ash, Kaidan you're team two.' He glanced to Nayl, who was giving him a cool look from behind his visor.

'Tehmujai, cover Tiras, Freya you're going with the Lieutenant and Chief Williams.' Nayl ordered. 'Raf, after you've dropped us off, take up a holding pattern and provide cover-fire to anyone who asks.'  
_+'Copy that, we're coming in hot.'+_ This was briefly followed by the whine of a multi-laser, then the Valkyrie turned ninety degrees and a side door opened, delivering them right to the first bomb.

**Ah, sod it.**

**You people probably want an update and I want to get to writing the next chapter.**

**I…there's no excuse for the length of time between updates.**

**I've been neglecting all my stories horrendously and all because I'm now out of school (hopefully for good, god willing,) and have been abusing the privileges of unlimited Xbox access, Halo 4 and no need to go to bed early.**

**And I've also been working on that Original Fiction I keep mentioning off and on.**

**I'm done with the first draft and am currently revising it. (Read: rewriting chapters I feel need work and adding scenes to flesh out half-completed thoughts I just left sitting 'cause I wanted to get the draft done quick.)**

**On another note, this story now has an AWESOME piece of cover art done by ****artark****.**

**Now, I believe the next thing on the agenda is acknowledgements:**

**For Reviewing: edboy4962, WarmasterSamiel, Blinded in a Bolthole, Eipok, Ursakar, ShadowCub, Hideout Writer, Jouaint, darkowl1989, WildCard-Yes Man, alienxv0, E E Merica, Onsholo and Danyael Prince.**

**These things pile up when you're not looking, I guess…**

**And to those who are now following everything I write, thank you: I've gotten a LOT of attention these past few months through pretty much all my 40k stories, so much in fact that I actually can't find you all and the list for Author Alerts and Favourites would take up a lot more room, so though it pains me to just say a general thank you, it's all I can do at present.**

**Also, I'm currently working on something else new (it's fan fiction and a crossover and that's all I'm saying,) and I may consider posting it soon.**

**Okay, I'll just drop this little hint: It's a Mass Effect crossover. One that no-one has done before probably because they're not insane.**

**Not that I am, but I guess there's a reason no-one has tried it before…**

**Okay, Thanks again to the Colonel for Betaing and so 'til next time:**

**No One-Liners.**


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